Rush Moon
by JustNibblin
Summary: Fry awakes in a dumpster, learns he's been missing for a year, that he's been fired from PE, and that Leela hates him for a despicable act. But not everything is what it seems. Explains how last TV episode connects to BBS. WARNING! PLOT TWISTS GALORE!
1. Prologue

Dear Sir,

**Dear Sir,**

**Congratulations! You have successfully completed Level 1 of the "Talk is Cheap" online prose fan fiction course. As a newly minted "Ernest Hemingway" level writer you are now permitted to attempt a prose story, provided your sentences are less than 20 words, you attempt descriptive scenes no more complex than a clean, well-lighted place, your syntax remains no more intricate than a compound sentence, and your vocabulary is not more erudite than a high school level. For example, this means you are not permitted to use "erudite" in a sentence. You are also allowed a maximum of one (1) pretentious literary quote. Best of luck! Remember, try not to really abuse very much those common adjectives and adverbs, remember that "said" is a perfectly legitimate word, and be mindful of excessive punctuation!! Your certification expires November 27. Your bill is attached.**

** Regards,**

** Talk is Cheap, Inc.**

**Dear Sir,**

**Congratulations on the purchase of your new Clichemometer 150! Never again will you find yourself between a rock and a hard place, or paint yourself into a corner with this handy, dandy, user-friendly device, which can spit out text for any situation. Writing romance? Hearts will flutter, chests will heave, fur will fly, and lovers will mope! Writing action? Bullets will be dodged and your characters will run for their lives as they escape by the skin of their teeth! Writing humor? Can't help you there. But with our special plot accessory (not included) the Clicheometer 1500 will even generate plots for you, including the ever-popular "boy loses girl," and "hero goes on a journey to find himself" plotlines! Now your creativity can be unleashed for other things, like writing pithy statements on message boards! So welcome to a whole new world of prose, stop beating around the bush, bite the bullet, and get writing!**

**Ten percent discount provided with your 'Talk is cheap' certificate.**

** Regards,**

** DarknStormyNite Inc.**

**WARNING!The Intergalactic Panel of Fanfic Ratings has rated the following Futurama fanfiction as M5 (110), or maturity level five. Sentient beings should be aware of his/her/its/our reproductive natural history before attempting to read this fiction, with the exception of Klathurians who have successfully survived their second molting cycle, and energy beings who are immortal, and thus presumably care more about banking interest rates than reproduction anyway.**

**WARNING! The first few chapters of this fiction have also been rated "Sh", for shippy. Potential readers are warned that "Sh" rated stories may contain scenes concerning existential angst, syrupy romance, internal soliloquies, and relationships potentially up to and including marriage and children. Please exercise appropriate precautions when reading the first parts of this story. **

**WARNING! This fiction has also been rated "Z" for Zoidberg. Potential readers with negative reactions to humor involving Jewish lobster/manatee characters are advised that this fiction contains numerous such situations, and they should thus exercise appropriate caution. **

**WARNING! Potential readers are warned that the following prose story is a fanfiction, and may thus contain out-of-character situations, author self-inserts, pretentious writing, slow pacing, strange metaphorical dream sequences, and a dearth of actual humor. But we figure if you've spent all this time reading all these warnings, you have nothing better to do, so go ahead and read, exercising appropriate caution. We pity you. **

** -IPFR, June 3006**

Wasn't there a story here somewhere?

RUSH MOON

_Se vuol ballare, signor contino,_

_il chitarrino le suonerò, sì,_

_se vuol venire nella mia scuola,_

_la capriola le insegnerò, sì._

_If you would dance, my pretty Count,_

_I'll play my little guitar for you._

_If you will come to my dancing school_

_I'll gladly teach you to dance._

-The Marriage of Figaro, W. Mozart

Part 1: A Day I Want to Forget

Prologue

Prof. Hubert Farnsworth slept slumped in his hoverchair in his laboratory. He had been working on his latest doomsday device, but he had dozed off while reviewing the quantum field equations in his head, and had begun dreaming of younger times with Mom. He dreamt of mottled flesh and creaky joints, of a mix of solder and sweat, as a gentle breeze tickled his nose. Something wasn't right…

And in response his dreams shifted…

"_Thanks Professor, for everything."_

_He was sad to see him go. It would be hard to find a test subject with a slower learning curve than his remote ancestor. Most sentient beings would have learned to stop pressing the button to get the cookie after the fifth shock. He had hoped that years of careful observation of this young man would cumulate in a revolutionary theory of the minimum number of neurons required to sustain an approximation of intelligence. Take that, Wenstrom!_

"_Neat! What's that you're working on?"_

_SMASH!_

_Maybe he wasn't that sad to see him go after all. _

"_Oh, sorry! Didn't mean to knock that over."_

_It had taken months to develop that fermion foam for his latest power source, and now a dark stain was creeping along the floor._

"_I'll try to wipe it up with this towel here. AHHH! It's moving! Get off me! Get off! I don't like towels! Help!"_

_Life was so fragile, so delicate. Stupid life. The universe should have been able to do much better. He had done much better. He had worked years to create a life form as life should be—indestructible, able to survive any temperature, any radiation, any environment, any emotional crisis. This "towel" was actually a colony of artificial single-celled nanotube-strength bacteriolichezoa that could survive anything thrown at it…_

"_Uh, geez, Professor, is it supposed to shrivel up like that?"_

_Anything, apparently, except fermion foam. _

"_Well, uh, I guess that's a little better, even if it's on fire." _

_Two projects ruined within seconds. The tarred remains of the bacteriochezoa mixing with the half-spin foam were making really pungent vapors. Entropy, thy name is—_

"_Gosh, it's eating a hole in the floor. I'm really sorry about that –oh look! It made another hole down there! And another hole! Whooops, almost got Zoidberg there!"_

"_Well anyway, I need to go. Hermes has taken care of everything. I'll be hard to find, so no point in looking for me. I might be back someday. But for now, thanks…"_

_Suddenly he couldn't breathe as two arms cracked a couple of ribs. Damn you humanity and your stupid emotions! Damn these hugs and other germ-spreading social artifacts!_

_And yet he found himself a little sad that his only genetic relation was leaving. It was strange to be relieved yet despondent at the same time. And as the red head vanished through the door, and he surveyed the ashes of his latest research efforts, all come to naught, he thought that this was definitely a day he wanted to forget…_

The breeze tickled his nose again, and he smelled a hint of flowers and hot asphalt. Something was not right. A breeze? In his laboratory?

Farnsworth opened his eyes. An owl stared back at him, blinking its eyes in the bright sunlight. Sunlight? He swiveled in his chair.

The entire wall of the lab was missing, and he found himself staring down into the main hangar of Planet Express. The ship was gone, but the floor was buried under a pile of twisted, smoking debris. Squinting his eyes, he looked up. The roof of the hangar was gone, and as he looked a butterfly languidly fluttered through the hole, and white clouds idly drifted across a brilliant summer sky. Had his doomsday device gone off? But if it had, wouldn't his molecules be floating over Europistan by now? He felt his face. Yes, it was still there, so he wasn't an astral projection. So it wasn't a doomsday device. More like a doomlet device.

"What's a Woolong?"

He spun his chair around and saw three figures clustered around a holographic display. He could see a virtual banner titled "IBHG" flapping on the screen. A female in a pink sweatsuit and a purple-headed one-eyed woman were both looking at a dark-skinned human, who was typing information into a keyboard underneath the projection. They looked familiar. He felt a desire to dissect the Cyclops, but something told him she was more valuable alive. Besides, she looked disappointingly healthy.

"It's a traditional unit of currency among bounty hunters, Leela. It dates back to the 21nd century, I think. Dey're a traditional bunch, these bounty hunters. The Hunter's Guild only started accepting credit cards three centuries ago. Let's see… 2 million Woolong translates into abou' 2,000,231.25, give or take 125.67."

"Is it enough money to make it worth it, Hermes?"

"Well, it's not the Wong fortune, Amy, but it's enough to keep us from going out of business. Dey didn't just take the ship. No mon. They also took all of Planet Express's petty cash and hacked our other short-term assets. If we don't find them soon, say within two weeks, this company's in deep voodoo."

Farnsworth was distracted by a faint yet familiar voice. Looking up, he saw most of the lab roof was missing, and he could stare into the lounge, where the TV was precariously perched on the lip of the hole.

"_Once again our top story. At seven this morning the Big Apple Bank was robbed by two individuals threatening to detonate a bomb. After snatching Mom's Robot Corp's payroll, the robbers stole a police hovercar and went on a rampage through the streets."_

"I'm going to need names to register you into the Guild. Do you want to use your real names?"

"It'd be safer to use fake names, so our identities can't be traced as easily. We'll need names that are completely different from our real ones. Let's see, I'll be Lola."

"And I'll be KiffiePoo."

"That's really lame, using your boyfriend's name."

_Among the injured was the second assistant aide to the mayor, Chaz Smythe III, Jr. But he got the VIP suite in the hospital. He's that important._

"Don't take your bitterness out on me, Leela. Remember our discussion about moving on?"

"Moving on, I'd say that's a pretty lame name. Why not just use Valentine and make the lameness really obvious?"

"Fine then. I'll use one of my favorite Bugaloo's names, like Faye. Oh hey, why don't we pose as sisters? That'd be fun!"

The tall purple-haired woman rolled her eye, a motion so familiar to Farnsworth that he suddenly remembered that the freak worked for him.

"Oh yeah, we look soooo much alike. I don't even look human, remember?"

"Oh com'mon, you can be adopted."

"No, you'll be the adopted one."

"Greck-leh! I hit a nerve there, huh? Fine, have it your way."

"Ok, then ladies. Lola and Faye Valentine, it'll be."

"_After a dramatic chase, the thieves holed up inside a local delivery service, where we have unconfirmed reports that they took hostages before hijacking a space ship and destroying much of the building. Well, Morbo, we haven't seen this much carnage on the streets since the fast-food industry managed to get McPluto declared an official planet!"_

"Wow, we're going to have to get totally new outfits to go with those guns and knives! It's gonna be tough to find a summer color that matches with blood-stains…"

"Our outfits are just fine. What I want to know, Hermes, is when the rules say "alive," how alive do they have to be?"

Only now did Farnsworth notice how the purple-haired freak was walking with a limp. Her shirt was torn, her face was bloodied, and she cradled her left hand as she asked the question. She shifted position, and now he could see two fingers were splinted together. Perhaps a dissection in the near future was not out of the question after all…

"_Morbo is disgusted with the pitiful security system of this puny planet. Your defenses are laughable, and our invasion force will crush you like sunflower seeds. Morbo likes sunflower seeds. We will let those exist. But Chihuahuas. We will destroy your Chihuahuas."_

"It's right here, Leela. According to the latest agreement signed by the Guild 15 years ago, a suspect mus' retain at least half their limbs and recover 75 of their original cognitive capacity within six months to qualify as "alive".

"_Ha Ha Ha, how funny you are! But now the latest developments—a reward for the capture of the suspects has been posted by an anonymous donor, with the restriction that the suspects be captured alive and deposited at an as-yet unspecified location. The size of the reward is such that a crowd of bounty hunters is descending onto our system to try to pick up the trail! The Intergalactic Bounty Hunters Guild has reported a 10 increase in membership over the past two hours. Who knows? Maybe your co-worker next to you may be taking out a hunting license right now! Right Morbo? Morbo? Where'd he go?"_

"What's happening here? Did I sleep through something?"

All three turned to face him. Yes, he definitely knew their names. But he didn't really care.

"Professor, I've just reregistered Leela and Amy's career chips as bounty hunters. They're leaving as soon as possible to recapture our stolen ship before anyone else can do so and claim salvage rights. Are you sure you're up to this, Leela?"

Leela was pale and trembling, but to Farnsworth's disappointment he saw that her shaking was not due to shock or death throes, but to a barely-contained fury.

"Oh yes, I can't wait to see them again. And when I get my hands on them, they're going to wish someone else had found them. And then they'll be out of our lives for good."

She didn't shout, and she made no threatening motion, but something in her voice caused both Hermes and Amy to step back a couple of paces unconsciously, as did Farnsworth's chair.

"Come on, Amy. We're going to have to use your Beta Romero to start, so let's get it loaded up."

"_The bank has just released holographic footage of the two perpetrators, and we've been able to obtain names."_

As the two women left the room and Hermes turned to fill in the still groggy professor, the slightly distorted voice of Linda the newscaster floated through the lab.

"_And it looks like practice makes perfect for these two! Just a few years ago both served prison sentences for robbing this same bank!"_

There was a pause, and then,

"_The names of the suspects are Robot Bender Rodriquez and Human Phillip J Fry, both former employees of the Planet Express delivery company, although Mr. Fry apparently left the company a year ago. We'll keep you updated throughout the Sol diurnal cycle. We'll now turn for our one-second opinion to our psychologist.—"_


	2. Part I,Chapter 1

**A day I want to forget, part 1.**

Seventy-two hours earlier:

_He sat in a small room crammed with DVDs and old pizza boxes, watching a small TV. The only light in the room was the amber glow of the screen, casting an unhealthy pallor on his blank, unblinking face._

_A gentle tone reached his ears, fading away like a sunset over a desert. For the first time in a long time, he looked around._

_He saw a glow fading behind the blinds of the only window in the room, a foot-square ceiling window, covered with dust. He looked around, and saw that everything was covered by a layer of dust, including himself. Strange. He turned to look back at the TV, and realized that it was showing nothing but static. Also strange. Not wanting to do anything, he stared at the screen, but even though he was capable of watching just about anything, even static got boring after a while._

_He kept thinking of that tone. He knew that tone. He wanted to find it. But how? Well, leaving the room would be a start. He looked for a door. There wasn't one. Really strange. He nearly choked himself on the blinds before he found a way to pull them open, and he clambered on top of the dusty DVD piles to peek through the window, after rubbing his elbow on the glass to smudge away some dust. What met his eyes was an enormous, flat, featureless landscape, with a black sky. Yet somehow there seemed to be enough grey light to see to the horizon._

_He found he was able to push open the window and tried to slide through. It hurt more than he thought. It hurt very badly. It would be so easy to go back, sit down, and watch and not worry._

_No, there had been something in that tone, a longing, a loneliness, that prompted him to move on, despite the pain, and after a while he slipped through and fell to the ground._

_He was standing outside a one-room house in the middle of the plain. Except it now looked like a desert. In the dim light he could make out shapes of cactus in the distance, and overhead he was able to resolve a few stars. Now what?_

_In one direction there seemed to be a faint glow that was rapidly receding beyond the horizon. He began to walk._

_He walked for what seemed to be days, but he had no sense of time. He did notice, after a while, that the plain was no longer featureless. At first he would see just a few files of sand, or an isolated cactus, but eventually he began to see pebbles, then rocks, then boulders. He actually had to watch his step as he scrambled over the rough trail._

_Now the sky was filled with stars, with more winking back on every time he looked. And as each star appeared, more light fell onto the landscape, revealing more features. _

_He was thirsty, but he couldn't drink. He went on. He was hungry, but couldn't eat. He went on. He went on, even though he had no idea whether he was heading in the right direction, or even what exactly he was looking for._

_The rock formations had become denser and now they joined into actual walls. The ground was now sloping upward, and he was so busy watching his next step that it took him a while to realize that the rock formations had developed a bunch of regularly shaped holes, almost like windows. In fact, the formations looked a lot like buildings now…_

_He walked down what now seemed to be a street, but a street piled with rubble amidst what appeared to be an abandoned city. He didn't feel fear until he caught glimpses of faint wisps out of the corner of his eye, but when he turned to look they were always gone._

_One formation, or building, seemed more familiar than the others. He walked to a ground-level cave opening and walked in. Somehow he sensed that he was spiraling up inside the building. Passages became corridors and steps became stairs. He now noticed doors and hallways. He saw his first sign. _

"_NO POWER FAILURES SINCE 1997…", it read. He had no idea what it meant, but he felt he should open the door._

_Inside he saw several long objects that looked like coffins, propped against the wall. They scared him, but he also knew that he should know what they were. He had spent a lot of time in one of them. A lot of time. In fact, this one, to the far left._

_And for reasons he couldn't fathom, he stepped in…_

He woke up, scratched himself in a place that needed some scratching, and looked around. Pizza box on floor, some unknown stinky liquid pooling in the corner, streaks of some smelly goop creeping down the walls… It all seemed comfortable, familiar. He was home.

But was he? That dead owl on top of that pile of trash just didn't seem right. Actually, that big pile of diapers didn't seem right either. He was pretty sure he didn't wear diapers. He checked. Nope. Also, it looked like those diapers were meant for someone with a tail. He shoved his hand down the back of his underpants. Nope. He looked down. He was sleeping on a big pile of garbage bags. Garbage bags? An image of a huge garbage ball hurling through space jumped into in his mind, then faded before he could understand it.

He looked up at the sloping ceiling a few inches above him. That didn't seem right. Had his room shrunk? Not likely. Had he grown bigger through some enlarging formula that –what was his name?—had created? Now why was he thinking thoughts like that? By the way, who am I? He tried to remember the past, and couldn't grasp anything. He reached out his hand and pushed against the ceiling. It moved. That also didn't seem right.

He pushed harder and sat up. The glare of a bright blue sky overwhelmed him for a moment, and he had to squint to focus. He was in a dumpster, holding up the lid. Hovercars passed back and forth in the street in front of him, a bunch of Cygnoids were chattering in front of a pizzeria, and a small coffee house was doing a brisk business a short distance away. He stared at the Cygnoids. He wasn't feeling shocked or amazed, so he guessed he must be used to seeing things like this. He looked around again. A building stood catty-corner from his location, next to a large river. As he looked at the spherical upper floors suspended above the enormous hangar, something swatted at his mind before curling up and going back to sleep. He knew this place. It was important to him.

And someone was walking up to the front door. She walked steadily and straight, no movement wasted, every motion of her body indicating concentration and purpose. Only her long purple ponytail seemed to indulge itself in the luxury of wasted motion as it swung back and forth behind her head.

Her name was… was…

Damn! But he knew her. She was important, very important. And at that moment terror seeped into his mind. Something bad had happened. Very bad. And somehow she was part of the bad thing. So much so, that he was afraid to go near her. But he felt an equally strong urge to go after her.

Still indecisive, he dropped both hands to the lip of the dumpster, to try to haul himself out. Had he been a Rolsalian, this would have been a perfectly good move, because he could have used his third arm to hold up the dumspter lid. But he wasn't, so he didn't, and the lid crashed onto the top of his head, knocking him back into the dumpster.

Turanga Leela heard a crash from across the street. Her thoughts moved away from the weather (clam, clear, no electromagnetic storms—good launching conditions) to the street. All she saw was a group of owls flying away from a dumpster.

She sighed. She was jumpy, and although she knew why, she didn't like thinking about it. In just a few days it would mark one year since Fry had left Planet Express. The bile rose in her stomach as images of that day leapt over her carefully-constructed mental blocks and invaded her memory. Disgusted, she shoved them out her mind. Hatred and bitterness were no use to her now. She had suffered worse and had endured. It was time to move on, but like a persistent mosquito the events of that day kept irritating her thoughts.

It really was a day she wanted to forget.


	3. Part I, Chapter 2

_And for reasons he couldn't fathom, he stepped in…_

…_and stepped right out back into the room, as if he had simply walked through a door. How strange! He looked behind him and saw only the inky blackness of the opening. He shuddered; there was no going back. And he walked out of the room._

_Everything was much clearer now. The buildings were different. Not only were they easier to see, they were in much better condition. In fact, as he stared holes in one building started to fill in with glass. He walked down the street in a random direction that he knew could not be random._

_He kept thinking there were others around him. Crowds in fact, going about their day, but when he turned to look he was alone. Grimly, he marched on._

_He saw a building next to a river, and knew answers lay there. He walked through the broken doors and stared. Trash lay everywhere on the floor, and the wind blew through gaps in the wall. Disappointed, expecting more, he climbed the stairs and saw a conference table. At least that's what he thought it was. How did he know that? He stood on the table, in the center, and looked around. Here was where he needed to be, the end of all paths. He stood and tried to find meaning in the breeze, in the gray beams of light punching through the holes in the ceiling. And the silence was complete. No sound, no life, no hope._

_And then he saw a glimmer in the rubble underneath one of the beams._

_Jumping down, he walked up, scooped away some dirt, and pulled an object out of the ground. For the first time, amidst all the grays and blacks around him, he saw something in color. It was a pipe with a bulb attached to the end of it. Somehow he knew to put it to his lips and blow. Nothing. He tried again. A faint strained sound came out, the first sound he had heard in a long time. He readjusted and tried again. The tone he had been seeking emerged and enveloped the room. First the tone, then the tempo, then the tune. A green smoke emerged from the tip and swirled above him, gradually growing larger like a snowball rolling down a hill. It floated above the conference table and settled onto it, and all the while he kept playing. Color seemed to be seeping back into existence, emanating from the cloud above the table. Furniture self-repaired, walls re-sealed, and computer screens and appliances faded into existence around him, but he only noticed the cloud. For the cloud had now resolved into a silhouette of a person, a person with its back turned to him. And as wisps of white smoke whirled around the crouched figure, it stood up and he could see a cloud of purple billowing around the head. The figure turned around._

_And she opened her eye…_

He woke up, scratched himself in a place that really needed some scratching, and remembered her name. Leela. And he was Fry. Philip J Fry. A flood of images suddenly piled into his mind like a freeway accident. Dance lesson. Last night. Hangover. Planet Express. He worked there. And it was morning. And he was probably late. He looked down at his clothes, stained with all sorts of unidentified fluids. No time to shower. Actually, today wasn't shower day anyway. If he had to, he could use the locker room. Part of him wondered why he was in a dumpster, but his life was full of wonders, so he climbed out of the dumpster and put his disquiet on hold. At least his hangover wasn't too bad. In fact, he didn't seem to have one at all.

Quickly he walked into Planet Express. Was it just him or did the place look a bit … spiffy? Maybe it was the elegantly etched glass doors, the new microwave, leather chairs around the conference table… Actually, it wasn't leather, but some sort of scaly hide. But it seemed as classy as zebra-stripped lizard skin could ever be. A sign caught his eye, and he read the digital display:

"ACCIDENT FREE WORKPLACE FOR 361 DAYS."

He had never seen that sign reach the triple digits before. Double digits, even. Maybe it needed to be adjusted. He grabbed the edges of the sign and pulled hard. Wouldn't …come…. loose… His hands slipped and he fell backwards, cracking his head on the ground and biting his lip in the process. As he rubbed his finger over his lips, tasting blood, the display reset back to zero. OK, that was more like it.

Where was everybody? Maybe he should look at the clock. It was later than he thought. That's why the ship was gone. Whoops! Well, he would get yelled at, but it was all part of the job. And it wasn't too late for _All my Circuits!_

He slouched into the lounge and cast an approving eye over the new sofa. Time to break in new butt-prints. Ooh, massager! His jaw dropped at the sight of the TV. Holy smokes, the screen was three times as big as he remembered! Part of him had always been curious why TVs a thousand years into the future were smaller than in the 20th century.

He flicked through the channels. Wow, smellovision! Ah, here we go…

"_Oh Calculon, your evil half-brother has captured your long-lost twin and converted him into a human!"_

Wait, wasn't Calculon supposed to be in coma? Underwater?

"_Oh _Monique_, the horror. The hooorrrrooorrr! Quickly, we must find my token human friend, who has gone to Milwaukee to satisfy his mating urges, and get his advice!"_

But wasn't the token human friend a prisoner of Monique's evil father-in-law's outlaw beta version? And he thought he remembered that Monique's upgraded cousin had taken her to the forbidden oil pleasure pits of Petrol VI to divert her imaging routines away from Calculon's coma but she had nearly been seduced by Sleazy Martinez who planned to download Monique's original prototype's fortune by accessing the password embedded in her ex-fiances encryption code? I mean, it had all been pretty simple, hadn't it?

"Sweet Jesus lizard walking on water! Fry, you're back, mon!"

Fry turned and saw Hermes staring at him, looking stunned.

"Ship's gone. Musta overslept."

"Um, yeah. In my office, quickly."

Fry shrugged and wandered into the administrative headquarters of Planet Express. To his surprise, Hermes's desk was clear. Usually his Inbox and Outbox were crammed with all sorts of forms and carbon copies, but now the whole thing was looking almost forlorn…

"Fry, have you looked into a mirror lately?"

"I tried once, but it broke when I tried to stick my head in."

Hermes pressed a button and a mirror appeared on the wall. Fry nonchalantly glanced sideways, and nearly cried out. A heavily bearded face with long read hair past the shoulders was staring back at him with wide eyes.

Hermes watched Fry as he felt the beard on his face. Truth be told, when he had seen Fry, he had felt a flash of fear as the words of his dear departed grandmamma had come back to him.

"_De zombie dead, deara, always have de longest hair and finga-nails. Cause even when you dead, your hair and nails, dey still grow, you know?"_

"Fry, where've you been? Sweet Cher in the air, It's been a whole wet and rainy season, almost, since you've left here. Looks like you've been smokin' something and sleepin' outside! Are the Grateful Dead tourin' again?"

"Whadda you mean? I've been here. Just went on a delivery yesterday. Went dancing with--" He stopped. Hermes probably shouldn't know how trashed he, Leela, Amy, and Bender had probably gotten last night, after the dance class.

"Here, try this out." Hermes pointed to a head-sized box sitting in the corner of his office. One side of the box had a large hole in it, and as Fry peeked through, he saw a thick nest of blades, scissors, and knifes. One corkscrew sat waiting in a corner, coiled like a snake waiting to strike whatever was stupid enough to enter. Only the toothbrush looked relatively harmless.

"Go ahead, stick your head in. It's the latest in time savin' productivity enhancers."

"Er, what is it? Looks like a suicide booth."

"Of course it does, it's made by the same company. Suicide booths are manufactured by the shaving companies, didn't you know? You haven't heard the slogan "We can cut your throat as well as we cut your hair?"

"Uhhh…"

"Actually, this model is a combo suicide/shaving kit. Oh yeah, I forgot. It's set on 'kill' right now. OK, I've switched it. Now you can stick your head in. And don't forget to relax. If you tense your face you'll lose some skin."

Nonplussed, Fry stuck his head in. As the box began to whirr and Fry began to whine, Hermes thought of the last time he had seen the young delivery boy—

"_It's in the regulations."_

"_Well I don't want one, and no one wants one for me."_

_He stood in front of his desk, slouched as usual, hands jammed in that red jacket of his. He had only been with the company for four years, but some of the paperwork this boy had generated had become legend within the Central Bureaucracy. Hermes still remembered the time when a level 5 admin (A five!) actually had to look up a regulation to see whether what Fry did with that pencil _

_(a) constituted sexual harassment, and (b) if it were legally possible to sexually harass yourself._

"_Well, any employee with more than two years of service is required to have a farewell ceremony, where everyone can wish him well with appropriate amounts of insincerity. There's no way around it."_

"_Will Leela be there?"_

"_She took a long-term leave yesterday, so I don' know. And now you're leaving faster than an overthrown Caribbean dictator. I'm half-expectin' Bender to walk in here and quit as well."_

_Fry seemed only mildly interested in the news about Leela._

"_Well, I'm leaving for good, so maybe that'll make your paperwork simpler."_

_Wrong thing for him to say. Truth be told, the past few years had produced some of the most interesting and challenging paperwork in his career. The medical forms alone—ah well, the past was past. He had run some quick numbers and was astounded at future profit projections if the business just kept the mutant and the robot, and dropped the old man's relative. This held even if the Cyclops did take some time off. It was amazing how perfectly Leela's productivity had been cancelled by Fry and Bender, or as he privately called them, the two Horsemen. So he would lose a blizzard of paperwork. He could learn to live with boredom._

"_No, I'm sorry. We are goin' to have to get together to wish you well, whether you like it or not."_

"_I'll can pay you not to give this party."_

"_Fry, sorry, but dat's a bribe, and all bribe offers must be submitted on form KCKBCK-5, copied in triplicate, and submitted to the Central Bureaucracy with six weeks notice. And you tell me you're leavin' tomorrow night!"_

"_Please Hermes, you must be able to do something."_

_There was a tinge of sadness in the plea, and to his shame Hermes found himself responding._

"_Well, look. If we keep payin' you, then you technically haven't left employment. So say we agree on a payment of 1 a week, transmit it to your account, then we'd have to do nothin'. I'd have to fiddle with some forms, but then we wouldn't have to do a party."_

"_Thanks Hermes, but one thing. I may not be able to get to that account-would you transfer it to Bender's account instead?"_

_If he were to make an itemized list of entities he would trust money to (cross-referenced of course), Bender would be somewhere on the bottom. But it was his dollar a week._

"_Fine. So sign, here, and here, and here, lick this, stare into this, hold still while I put in the needle—I said hold still! OK, good, you're all set!_

"_Great, Hermes! I have a lot of good memories here. Say goodbye to LaBarbara and Dwight for me. Goodbye."_

_He shook hands, and with that he strode out the door. Well it was nice for him to ask about his family. _

_And yet the memory left a sour smell in his mind. For he technically should have submitted a report informing the Central Bureaucracy of the 1/month reassignment for approval, but he hadn't done so because he hadn't been sure it would have been approved. _

_For the first time in a spotless career he had deliberately broken a regulation, and it was a source of constant irritation to him. For that reason he really didn't like to think about that day. In fact, it was a day he would rather forget. And now he was back-_

"Qwerlp!"

Hermes snapped out of his recollection and switched off the shaver. Fry whipped his head out of the box, revealing an immaculate haircut and smooth-shaven cheeks that glistened in the fluorescent lighting. Hermes squinted, and saw that the glistening was due to the blood from a multitude of thin cuts on his face. Huge tufts of red hair jutted out of the shaver like some sort of exotic plant growing out of the side of a square pot.

"How was it?"

"I think the end of my tongue is gone! But my mouth now feels all fresh and minty!"

"Yeah, but sweet smells of Sheycelles! The rest of you is like an overripe plantain." And indeed, Hermes could see the sudden change in color as Fry's washed neckline met the rest of his body. "Wher've you been?"

Fry didn't really want to say he had been in a dumpster. "I can't really remember what happened after last night."

"Last night! How about the past twelve months?"

"Twelve months? What're you talking about?"

Hermes shoved a calendar in Fry's face. Fry looked down and shrugged. He wasn't the kind to keep track of birthdays. Or deadlines. Or time.

"You left twelve months ago with one day's notice." Hermes lowered his voice. "Technically you're still on the payroll. Are you here because you wan' your job back? Have you talked to Prof. Farnsworth?"

"Umm, yeah I still wanna work here. No, I haven't talked to nobody yet. No one's around."

"Well, Leela and Bender should be back from their delivery soon. Why don't you take a shower and we'll put you on the afternoon agenda, right after my latest analysis of trends in proportions of packing material in our deliveries."

And with that, Fry found himself outside the office, and soon after that, in front of the laundry machine in his underpants. He was beginning to think it was going to be a strange day, or stranger than usual.


	4. Part I, Chapter 3

**WARNING! The Intergalactic Panel of Fanfiction Ratings occasionally conducts automatied plot analysis (APA) on random samples of fanfiction to ensure minimum compliance with fanfiction standards. An analysis of the next two chapters has raised a flag in the system, in that the behavior of two primary female characters lie outside two standard deviations of the distribution of canonical personality traits for these characters. We have informed the author that this story is at risk of being classified "Out of Character" (OOC), and have received the statement, "To be a mystery, it needs to be mysterious." We believe this is an attempt at Earthican humor, but just in case we urge potential readers to exercise appropriate caution as they proceed.**

Had he really lost a year of his life? It didn't feel like it. It was too much to think about right now, and he loved watching the dry cycle spin, so he released his concerns and become so absorbed in the dryer's motion that he didn't hear Amy enter the room until she gave a sharp gasp.

"Fry, you're back!"

He tried to twist around and look back between his shoulder blades.

"What's wrong with it?"

"No, I mean you're here! You've come back from there, wherever there was!"

Fry wasn't the most observant person in the world when it came to women, but even he noticed the forced cheer in Amy's voice. He started to turn around to look at her.

"Yeah, Leela, Bender and me only stayed out a little longer than you-"

'"Fry, your underpants."

"Oh, yeah, sorry." And he started to pull on a pair of soggy jeans, slipped, and fell to the floor—

_And she caught him as he tripped over the contents of his locker._

"_Sorry," he said. _

"_No problem". He lay in her arms a moment longer than was really necessary, and then got up stepped back a few paces._

"_So you're really leaving? Hermes just told me…"_

"_Yep, I need to move on and see more of the universe than I can see here. Maybe forget a few things here…"_

"_But you've gotten to see an awful lot here. Is Bender going with you?"_

"_Nope, he can't go to some of the places I want to go. Warrant out for his arrest and all. Also, I'm really going to need my wallet." He turned back to his locker, sweeping the shelves with his arm, scooping everything into a backpack._

"_What about Leela?"_

"_What about her?"_

"_Well, haven't you been going out the past few weeks?"_

_Fry stopped crushing empty Slurm cans on the floor._

"_How'd you know?"_

"_Fry, I work closely with Leela hours each day. We women just can't hide things like that from each other. So, what're you two going to do?"_

_Fry paused, and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, as if he were trying to make up his mind to speak._

"_She has one eye."_

_She always thought he was clueless in a nice sort of way, but…_

"_Duh-wuh, Fry, I thought you had plenty of chances to notice that-"_

"_Well, yeah, but I just realized it, really realized it, the other day when we were—close. I mean-it's huge! It's like a dinner plate! I mean, kissing her is almost scary. I have to close my eyes just to keep me from staring at it while—you know!"_

_She giggled, which she knew was mean, but Fry was saying things she had always thought, but felt guilty thinking. She stifled her laugh quickly and moved to recover._

"_Yeah, but she's so beautiful in every other way, so smart, so brave…"_

"_So…boring!"_

_Both were silent for a moment, and then both burst out into a fresh round of giggles, two collaborators in a guilty secret._

"_I'm sorry, it's mean, but she's always wanting to talk about books from my time, like this guy named Joyce, or about homeless animals she wants to rescue, or "_

"_old boyfriends, mean orphans--I hear the same thing all the time."_

"_Yeah, and it gets like, yeah you were an orphan most of your life, and yeah you've really had a hard time with it, but geez, move on, why don't ya!"_

_It felt so good to hear him say things she privately thought when she was feeling jealous of her captain._

"_And I guess I started to think that this might be what the rest of my life could be with her. And I felt so let down, like I'd gotten a X-mas present—during the old X-mas I mean—that I really wanted, but found that all was inside was one of those little boxes of LifeSavers?"_

"_LifeSavers?"_

"_Not important. Anyway I started thinking about how I've wasted all these years waiting for her, how I've given up so much…"_

"_I always thought it was amazing how you sat by her bed for two weeks when she was in a coma," she said with complete honesty._

"_I passed up so many other chances…."_

"_Are you talking places, or people?"_

_The words just fell out of her. She hadn't flirted in a long time, since she had found her soulmate through Kif, and part of her missed the game._

_He looked at her shyly._

"_Well, I never should have dumped you so quickly. Sorry about that."_

"_Don't worry about it, it all worked out for the best." Somehow she couldn't bring herself to mention a certain green alien._

_He finished up packing his backpack and closed the locker._

"_Well, I guess this is goodbye."_

_She was curious. Had Leela taught him anything? Had he gotten better over the years? Of course Kif was still the only one for her, but did she still have the ability to move men, to prove that she wasn't just an overweight rich kid?_

"_Are we going to see you again?"_

"_Maybe some day, but really probably not. I just want to disappear and not make any big fuss about it. Makes it easier for everybody."_

_They wouldn't see each other again, what was the harm? And the way he was looking at her, it would be easy._

"_Amy—"_

_She stepped toward him but slipped on the Slurm can. Luckily he caught her in his arms, and then there was a long kiss. He had gotten better. Then he was gone._

The walls of the locker room began to shake. The Planet Express ship was descending into the launch bay.

"Amy?"

She snapped out of her reverie, and saw Fry staring at her. Oh no. Not again?

"Amy, why are you looking at me funny? Is my face still bleeding?"

_In the end he was gone and no harm was done. He wouldn't be back. She loved Kiffie and saw him every chance she got. And yet--_

_Yet, she didn't like to dwell on that day. It made her feel guilty, disloyal to one of the sweetest, gentlest, beings she had been lucky enough to meet. In the months that followed Kif had received some impressively expensive gifts from her. Guilt ransoms. All attempts to make amends for a day she would rather forget._

_And now he was back, and he knew…_

"I just remembered, Fry, I need to give Kiffie a call. The Nimbus is swinging by Mars in a couple of days. We're closer than ever. I can't wait to visit our children on Amphibios 9. Maybe he'll get off duty and we'll all get together at Elzar's, like old times. See ya sometime!"

And she bounced out the door as the room stopped shaking. Fry blinked a few times, then turned and pulled his shirt and jacket out of the washer. Still wet. Well, he knew a way around that.

The best way to dry things quickly at Planet Express was to suspend them in front of one of the rocket nozzles of the PE ship, just after the engine shut down. He glanced up at the ship's cockpit as he strolled into the hangar. No sign of anyone, and the staircase ramp hadn't been lowered. He walked to the stern of the ship and used an insulated carbon rod to delicately lower his shirt in front of a nozzle. There was a flash of steam, and he quickly yanked back the toasty warm shirt before it caught on fire. It was very much like trying to cook a marshmallow with a blowtorch, and Fry had vaporized quite a few shirts before he had figured out the technique. The warmth felt good on his skin as he pulled the shirt on. He was about to repeat the motion with the jacket when he heard the ramp lower, and saw Bender walk down and turn toward him. Smiling, Fry walked toward his best friend.

Bender looked up and saw Fry. And then began to sing.

"Froggy went a courtin'-he did ride-uh-huh-uh-huh. Froggywentacourtin'"

As he sang his visor closed, and he strode past Fry as fast as he could into the locker room.

"hedidridedidn'tseeFrysodoesn'tcountswordandpistolathissidestupidfroggie…"

Fry stood, bemused, then started to follow Bender. At that moment he began to fly. His feet lifted off the ground and he sailed toward the locker room door, which was closing behind Bender. After all the strange things that had happened so far today, Fry wasn't surprised that he could fly. In fact, this was a pleasant surprise, for a change. He stretched out his arms and felt the breeze past his face. Problem was, he didn't seem to be able to steer and the door was coming up awfully—

He slammed into the door face first and the world went blurry.


	5. Part I, Chapter 4

"Well, what do we have here?"

As he slumped to the floor, he felt a hand release his shirt. Oh, so he couldn't fly. But that disappointment was outweighed by the delight he felt hearing the sound of that voice. Leela! He looked up and gasped. She had two eyes!

Then he realized there were two Leelas standing in front of him. And two green spaceships. He clapped his hands to the side of his head to steady the ringing, and his double vision cleared. After a few moments he was able to look into the face he never got tired of watching. Recently they had had several very early deliveries, and he had found he loved to watch her eating breakfast cereal, much to her annoyance.

"What rock did you slither out from? World too tough for you? Coming back with your tail between your legs?"

Could something slither with a tail between its legs, he thought? So many mysteries in life…

She tilted her head to the side, and her ponytail slipped slightly onto her shoulder. Every week he found something new he liked about her face, her manner. So he knew that when she tilted her head she was in a playful mood.

For some reason, he suddenly remembered a nature special he had accidentally seen last week…

_The Arcturian slafhok likes to play with its food before it eats it. Last year seven-card stud seemed to be the behavior of choice…_

And she wrinkled her nose, which meant—

"And what's that smell?"

Oh yeah, he hadn't showered yet. Had to admire dumpster smell. It just didn't quit. Why did the bad smells always seem to last longer than the good ones?

He chuckled, and then realized that even though there was a terse smile on her lips, her eye wasn't smiling at all. It was cold. Very cold.

Oh yeah. He was late. Had missed the delivery. Time to turn on the charm.

Grinning seductively, he raised an eyebrow.

"Did you miss me?"

She was staring at him intently, as if looking for something. Then the temperature in the hangar dropped further.

"I thought you might come back someday. So I'm prepared. Well, let's get this over with. Follow me."

And she strode past him into the locker room. Fry scrambled to grab his jacket and ran after her as she exited the locker room into the corridor, carrying a small folder.

Amy walked out of a room and almost collided with Leela, who glanced at her briefly and moved on without breaking stride.

"Hey, Leela, what's going on?"

"I take it you know Fry is back."

"Yes I do," she said cautiously.

"Then it's probably best for you to hear this as well. I don't want to repeat myself."

Amy watched Leela's retreating back and followed in step. Fry struggled to keep up, but he was getting a bit out of breath, and by the time he arrived at Hermes' door he saw Prof. Farnsworth, Hermes, Leela, and Amy standing inside. Bender and Zoidberg were nowhere to be found. There was a strange atmosphere of formality in the office that Fry had rarely felt outside the DOOP army, his bank, or Bender's fantasy blernsball meeting night.

"Hermes, has Phillip Fry requested his job back?"

Phillip? Did she just call him Phillip?

"Well, he hasn't formally submitted a request, but it seems he intends to." She spun around towards Fry.

"Are you planning to work here again?"

"Again?"

"Are … you… planning.. to … work… here… again?" she said in a tone of voice one would use with a very small child, or a foreign tourist, like someone from Toledo.

"Yeah, I'm working here."

She turned back to Hermes. "Then I need to inform you that if Fry is rehired, I will be handing in my resignation immediately." She held up a piece of paper.

Hermes shifted in his chair uncomfortably, but Fry managed to notice that Hermes did not look completely shocked. Neither did Amy. Farnsworth was asleep. In fact, the only person completely struck dumb was he.

"May I reques' the reason behind dis course of action?"

"As you no doubt know, Section 38.198.6 of the Employment code of New New York, revision 6, states that no valid reason for request of termination of employment need be given by the resignee when requesting career chip reassignment."

"Dat's true," Hermes nodded. "Do you have a list of prospective alternatives, per 38.198.8?"

"Yes, right here. I've located a few open career chips in other transportation agencies, and I can always return to my former position at Applied Cyrogenics. But it's surprising how many companies are interested in a one-eyed pilot. Even if her eye is as big as a dinner plate."

Hermes looked confused, and Farnsworth let out a snore. But why did Amy look like she wanted to melt into the floor? And why were the two women looking towards him like that? Fry looked over his shoulder, and saw a janitor sweeping past the door. Wow, PE had a janitor? What had that guy done to get both of them so furious? He wouldn't want to be in his shoes right now, since both Amy and Leela were getting angrier by the second.

And then his brain finally managed to catch up to the conversation.

"Wait, you're quitting because of me? Why?"

"Again, I have no obligation to explain my reasons for leaving. If Fry is too stupid or too much of a pathetic liar to understand why, I have no obligation to spell it out to him."

"By Jah's beard, lets all jus' settle down here!"

"I'm fine Hermes. Really. It's your decision. Take all the time you want. I'll be adjusting the Number 3 converter on the ship, since it's acting up again. Notify me when you've made a decision."

And she turned and walked out of the room.

"Calypso's fury," muttered Hermes as he nudged the Professor with his elbow, then looked at Fry.

"You have two minutes to work things out before I make a decision. Go."

Fry went and scrabbled after Leela's ponytail, currently disappearing around the corner.

"Leela, wait," he said, skidding behind her.

An arm shot out and he found himself pinned against the wall, staring down into her face. He kept forgetting how strong she was. She was so used to her eye that he forgot that she wasn't your usual human. Normally he felt protected by her strength, but this was definitely not normal.

"Oh, by the way-- hello, Fry. Welcome back." Her voice was steady, and she smiled a little at him. "Now I know you're a little on the slow side, so I'm going to speak slowly and clearly. Nod if you understand what I just said."

He swallowed, and opened his mouth to speak, but she gently rotated her forearm, squeezing his windpipe shut.

"I don't want to hear excuses from you. Just nod."

She had never reminded him of his slowness in such a brutal and blunt way, and he was unnerved. Of course, she usually didn't try to choke him either, and that was slightly troubling as well. In fact, wasn't he supposed to be nodding to stay conscious? He nodded.

"Regardless of what Planet Express decides, I do not want you to come near me, talk to me, or try to communicate with me in any way. Do not try to talk with me through Bender. Do not approach my parents. If you ever get this close to me again, I will probably hurt you."

Spots started to appear in front of Fry's eyes, but fortunately he had learned from past experience that he didn't need that much oxygen to think in the first place, so he was still able to listen, and to notice that Leela's arm was beginning to shake…

"In fact, part of me, a part of me I'm not particularly proud of, wants to hurt you now. Please, for your and my sakes, do not ever come near me again. I will repeat this one more time for your benefit, to make sure we understand each other. Do you agree that you will not ever speak to me again?"

Terrified and choking, Fry nodded.

"Do you understand that you will not write me on paper or by e-mail?"

He nodded again. Leela was still slightly smiling, almost as if she were enjoying a private joke with herself.

"Do you understand that you will not use our mutual friends or my parents to try to talk to me?"

Darkness was starting to close in on the edge of his vision, but Fry didn't dare struggle. He nodded.

"Good." She released the hold and smiled pleasantly. "At last I think we understand each other completely. I feel better now. Goodbye". And she was gone.

Fry understood, but found he could not comprehend. He stumbled back into Hermes's office. Farnsworth was muttering something into Hermes' ear, and Fry could pick up the words "dissection," "organs," and strangely enough, "towel," but that was about it. Hermes turned to Fry, and in that instant, from the look on Hermes' face, Fry suddenly had a flash of insight. He was about to be fired from Planet Express.


	6. Part I, Chapter 5

It was a beautiful summer day, and the streets were crowded as Fry rushed out through the new doors of Planet Express (not so new, he reminded himself) and onto the street. He blinked in the bright sunlight, then shrunk back, glancing left and right to see if he could spot a ponytail. He felt nothing at the moment, except a desperate, urgent need to find Bender. He darted down the street, past large swarms of creatures of all manner of limbs, colors, and feelers. The one thing they all had in common is that they did not seem to realize that Fry's life had just ended.

He had been in denial that he had vanished for a year, but twenty seconds of looking at Leela's unmasked hatred of him had ripped through all his deliberate ignorance and now he found himself almost sprinting down the street looking for answers. Well, more like jogging now.

And Leela. She had been mad at him before, but when she had lost her temper it had always been a short tempest, and there had always been a layer of affection even in her worst toungelashings, which invariably contained more disappointment and resignation than anger. But this—this, was something new. He was scared of her now. And he didn't even know what for or why.

He was walking and sweating as the Robot Arms apartments came into view, and up ahead he saw Bender doing his pimp walk toward the entrance.

"Wait, Bender!"

The pimp walk became more of a pimp run, but Fry managed to place a hand on Bender's shoulder, or what would have been a shoulder on a human, before Bender reached the door.

"Do-be-do-bee-doIdontseeyousoldyourstuff," sang the robot, pulled forward away from Fry's hand, and closed the entrance door. Fry heard the door lock, and pressed his face against the clear plastic and banged with his fists to try to attract the robot back. But Bender just jived on up the stairs.

When Bender reached his apartment, he walked to his window, looked below and watched Fry run his head into a brick wall.

_10001111100111001memory address 100101000…_

_Now this was what every day should be like! A Bender is great day! Two flooziebots, one on each arm, telling him things he already knew, but it was good to have it spelled out for the stupid ones out there._

"_Bender, honey, you're the greatest! No other robot could throw a party like you can!"_

"_Tell me something I don't know, baby! How about a little Ole Fortran for ya?"_

_Huge barrels of his favorite beer lay scattered across the room, as robots danced at a 60 Hz rhythm to a song written by yours truly. _

_The robo DJ shouted,"Do the Bender, everybody! (Yeah!) Do the Bender every way!(Yeah!) Do the Bend but don't break, 'cause if you break you're a pathetic loser who's not like Bender!(Yeah!)"_

_Oil jets suddenly squirted from the walls and the dancing robots waved their arms/probes/chainsaws in the air. Bender shook some oil off a Zuban cigar before lighting up. A small fireball enveloped him and the floozibots, but burned away quickly. Oh yeah, tastes good like an oil-soaked cigar should._

_His pet was in front of him, slipping a little on the floor, smiling._

_"Oh hey, Bender, this is amazing. Sorry I can't stay."_

_"Hmm?" said Bender, distracted by the voltage arcing from the floozibots._

_"I'm leaving for a long time. Don't know when I'll be back."_

_"OK, be sure to pick up some more beer for me at the mart."_

_"No, I mean I'm leaving town. For a long time. This is goodbye."_

_He had not precomputed this probability scenario. He swiveled his eyes onto Fry. His human pet looked much the same as usual, except he had a backpack on._

_"Not that I care, but you're leaving just like that? I thought you were still trying to network with bossy big boots-"_

_"Yeah, things didn't quite go as I planned-"_

_"She was Linux, you MS-DOS?"_

_"Uh, sure. Anyway I thought I would leave and see a bit more of the universe, so I've packed up all my things."_

_"Good idea. Let's ditch these losers and see what other pockets can be picked in the galaxy!"_

_"You don't understand, Bender. You can't come with me. I'm going some places you can't go. I'm trying to forget some things, and I think there are some places that can help."_

_"You mean—you don't want me to come?"_

_"No, not that! But do you know how many warrants for your arrest are out there?"_

_"Well, no one tells Bender what he can do! I'm coming too!"_

_"Tell you what. I'll pay you not to come after me."_

_Well, that changed everything._

_"How much?"_

_"A dollar a week. It'll go right into your account."_

_Bender pumped his fist in the air. Everything's coming up Bender again! Money for no work! He had learned a lot from humans. Someday he would learn all he needed from them, and then he could kill them all._

_"So there's the deal. If you don't look for me, and don't try to talk to me, you get one dollar a week. As long as that money keeps coming, I'm not here."_

_"Yeah, I got it the first time. So do I get paid now?"_

"_Just a moment." Fry pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to Bender, who glanced at it and stuffed it into his chest. "I'm hoping to visit this place, but to go there I need to give that letter to someone close to me. That's you."_

_Bender supposed that this would be a tender moment among humans, but the floozibots were flashing their LEDs suggestively. He replayed his request._

_"So do I get paid now?"_

_His former roommate then fished a dollar coin out of his pocket and flipped it to him, who held it up to the light to make sure that Nixon was growling at him from the coin face. The Nixon dollar was the two-hundred and fifty-first attempt by the Earthican government to produce a dollar coin, and for some reason it still looked like a quarter._

_"I was never here. Bye, buddy. Go ahead and sell what I don't take of my stuff, and have a drink on me."_

_"Hey baby, do you hear something? Because I don't."_

_"Just those askin' for you, honey. Bender, don't you see we're lonely over here?"_

_"Oh, yeah, that's going to end right now!"_

_And with that Bender threw his head back and poured the entire contents of an Olde Fortran bottle down his mouth. But even though the beer was great, the floozies were great, and he was the life of the party, for fifty milliseconds he noticed a glitch in his processing capacities. His human pet was leaving, and there seemed to be some residual capacitance in his pleasure processors. Well, the money would take care of that._

_It was the greatest party he had ever thrown. And yet he rarely downloaded the memory. In fact it was a memory sequence he sometimes considered erasing from storage…_

Bender watched Fry on the street as he remotely accessed Fry's account. And there it was—this week's payment. And as long as the payments kept coming, Bender would hold up his part of the deal.

But it was so sad how his first and only friend kept hitting his head on the wall….


	7. Part I, Chapter 6

**WARNING! The Intergalactic Panel of Fanfic Ratings advises potential readers that this chapter contains a copyrighted song, and thus may be mistakenly construed as a "songfic." Proceed with caution.**

_OK, this isn't working…_

Fry sat on the sidewalk, rubbing his head and staring ruefully at the brick wall in front of him. He had had a horrible feeling that maybe he was stuck in a bad dream, or even in a coma, and if that was the case, he needed to wake up. Leela had been pretty tight-lipped about what had happened in her coma, so Fry had no idea how to wake up from this one, if that was what it was. Pinching himself had hurt, but the world still seemed unchanged. He had finally built up the nerve to bang his head against the wall, and the pain was unbelievable. But when he opened his eyes, he was still sitting in the street, surrounded by pedestrians as indifferent to his presence as the wall was. In disappointment he decided that all of this had to be real, after all.

Head throbbing, he wandered through the streets. He was too scared to go back to Planet Express, and he was locked out of his apartment, assuming any of his stuff was even there anymore. He thought for a moment about the mutants, but Leela's warning still haunted him, so he walked by all sewer lids without hesitation.

The bright colors of the outside world became muted as large cumulus clouds crowded out the bright clue sky. The darkening skies mirrored Fry's mood, as he went by the Applied Cryogenics building and found it locked as well. A sign read:

CLOSED FOR FREEDOM DAY WEEKEND. PLEASE PUSH RELATIVES THROUGH SLOT. BE SURE TO INCLUDE ENOUGH DRY ICE TO LAST UNTIL TUESDAY.

He had never thought how much comfort his own apartment had given him in this strange world, but as he turned his back to the Cryogenics entrance he felt just like he had felt the first day he had arrived in the future. Lost, confused, and alone. He also felt that he had been in this spot recently, though he knew that couldn't be true. He walked down the street in a random direction that he somehow knew wasn't random.

The skies were now gray and a breeze had started to blow through the streets. The crowds thinned out, and for a moment Fry thought he sensed a presence behind him, but when he turned to look he was alone. Grimly, he marched on.

He saw the Planet Express building next to the river, and realized that he had come full circle during his long walk through New New York. He looked around, for some strange reason he was expecting to find his holophoner. He wished he had it now. He had been playing it a lot recently (or a year ago, he guessed) and it had always been a great comfort to him.

For a few moments the setting sun shone through the small gap between the cloud line and horizon, casting a rosy hue on the world before it was suddenly extinguished. And the rain fell along with the darkness.

Fry was getting wet, but he felt numb, both in flesh and spirit. He saw the dumpster across the street and huddled next to it, trying to work up the nerve to go back to the PE office and ask Hermes to spend the night. But Leela might still be working there, and he couldn't summon the courage to be near her. In fact he knew he couldn't face anyone right now.

Huddling by the dumpster wasn't working. Streams of water were pouring down his back.

Well, back to the beginning. He lifted the dumpster lid and almost gagged on the smell. But it was dry enough if he gingerly positioned himself on the garbage bags, and even a little warm, although he didn't dare think about what was decaying in there to release the heat. There was even a little gap in the lid for air. He hummed a few bars of "Walking on sunshine" as he lay in the darkness and tried to remember the most recent events he could clearly recall…

_They walked out of the dance hall, the strains of some traditional Earthican tune following them down the steps._

"_That was fun," Amy said. "Although that's the first time I've ever paid to have a man touch me."_

"_You were paying for a dance lesson, not a grope session," Leela lectured. Yet there was a lightness in both her tone and step that gave him a lot of pleasure to watch. He had waited a long time for this night._

"_I had a great time," Bender said, "crowded room, low lights, distracted and nervous dancers—I think I cleared 2000 tonight. A dance lesson is a pickpocket's paradise. It's like stealing candy from babies. Actually, even easier than that. Some of those babies are pretty stubborn."_

_He was only half-listening, for he was frustrated and upset with himself. Even with some secret practicing before tonight, he couldn't seem to pick up the simplest dance steps. He had danced with two left feet the entire lesson. Actually, that wasn't being fair to the aliens that actually had had two left feet, and who had ended up doing fairly well tonight._

"_Speaking of groping, Gary was sure interested in you tonight," Amy teased._

"_Oh, he was just being polite with a novice dancer," Leela said unconvincingly._

_There had been a lot of polite dancers around Leela tonight. She had told him that she had always wanted to learn the ancient ballroom dances, and after the opera and their recent near-death experience she had promised him they would learn together. At the last moment she also asked Bender and Amy to tag along, which annoyed him a little, but that feeling evaporated as soon as he saw his captain walk onto the floor. Leela had absorbed the classical dancing steps with the ease and grace that she had always displayed when mastering any athletic challenge. And by the end of the evening she had been so busy being used as a model by the teachers that Fry had hardly seen her. In the meantime, Fry had had to spend a lot of time trying to convince a Horrible Gelatinous Blob not to eat him after one particularly bad stumble. I mean, how was he to know that that part of an HGB 's anatomy was so sensitive?_

"_Fry? Come on, we need to get back. It's an early day tomorrow."_

_He looked up. Bender and Amy were already halfway down the street, but Leela had turned to look back at him. The music came to an end inside the building. She walked back up to him, her yellow dress swirling around her ankles, and raised her eyebrow._

"_Come on, you're just standing there. Let's go."_

"_OK."_

_She looked at him._

"_What's wrong?"_

"_Nothing. Just thinking. Let's go."_

"_Just thinking, huh?" He was expecting a sarcastic comment to follow, but instead she said, "You were having trouble with the steps, weren't you?"_

"_Oh a little, but I guess there's always next week."_

_A new song began in the hall, and the strains of an ancient cowboy ballad floated over the dirty street. _

"As I walked out on the streets of Laredo,

As I walked out on Laredo one day,"

_The melody was very gentle, and it had a 1-2-3 feel to it that meant it was-it was—come on Fry—_

"_Oh, I love the waltz. Come on, let's take a look at you. I'll lead."_

_Of course she would. She grabbed his left hand with her right, and tucked his right hand under her left shoulder. That simple contact so unnerved him that he forgot to move his feet._

"'I can see by your outfit that you are a cowboy',

These words he did say as I boldly strolled by."

"_Come on, Fry, move your feet. Left, two, three, one, two, three—no, right foot to the side, ouch!"_

"_Sorry, Leela. I'm trying. I really am. But let's just go."_

_She smiled suddenly, and to his astonishment she laughed._

"_Sorry, but I never thought I'd hear myself saying this to you, Fry. You're trying too hard. Here."_

_They came together again._

"Come an' sit down beside me an' hear my sad story,

I'm shot in the breast an' I know I must die.

"_Forget trying to count. Don't look at my feet. Just listen to the music and move with me."_

"_You mean, be impulsive?"_

_She started, and gave him an appraising look. Then she smiled again. _

"_Yes, I guess I'm saying that, huh? Now let's just dance and not worry."_

"Get six jolly cowboys to carry my coffin,

Six dance-hall maidens to bear up my pall,"

_Not the most romantic song in the world, thought Fry. What was the least romantic song ever? Maybe the Oscar Meier Wiener song? And why aren't there any cowmen? He was so preoccupied with this thought that he forgot to pay attention._

"_Yes, that's it."_

_And then he realized the streetlight was moving around them, and they were dancing a very simple step around a garbage can._

"Throw bunches of roses all over my coffin,

Roses to deaden the clods as they fall,"

_And then a strange thing happened. He relaxed, and then felt her relax underneath his hands. Now he could not tell where his hands ended and she began. Instead of two separate people dancing, there was now only one couple, locked together in one rhythm, moving with one motion. No collisions, no distractions, no leading, no following. Like a leaf floating on a gentle stream, they drifted across the cracked sidewalk, underneath the streetlamp._

"When thus he had spoken, the hot sun was setting,

The streets of Laredo grew cold as the clay,"

_And then the music was ending, and without planning to he raised one arm, and she spun underneath. They broke apart, their eyes met, and he bowed, and she curtsied, and then there was silence for a few moments, as both of them still breathed in unison._

"_Yes. Yes, see, that's all it takes," she said. "_It's not the feet, but the heart, the heart that matters. Remember?"

"_Hey, are you guys coming or what?" Bender said. "Or do I have to keep watching this crap?"_

"_Let's go to _O'Zorgnax's Pub_!" Amy chirped in. "Tonight is ladies' and _smizmar's_night! I've got double rounds coming! You might even get a round, Leela!"_

"_Tomorrow is an early day—" Leela began, but then stopped, shrugged, and grabbed Bender's arm. "Oh what the hell. Hermes can't pay us any less, can he? Sometimes you just have to be impulsive once in a while." _Did she just flick a smile toward him?

_She seemed carefree, almost giddy. He was glad she had liked the dance class so much._

_Amy was looking closely at Leela, as if she was trying to spot a brain slug. Then she shrugged, and grabbed Leela's other arm. Now Leela was definitely looking at him. "Coming?"_

"_In a bit. I'm not done thinking yet. It takes me a while, you know."_

_Funny, he almost never joked about his slowness. In fact, he hadn't even known he was slow until a few years ago, when he ate a bad sandwich at a fuel station and unexpected things had happened._

_Bender laughed immediately, and after a glancing askance at each other, Amy and Leela grinned as well. Then his three friends started down the street._

_He stood there and stared at the flies circling the lamppost, at the building's cracked façade, at the crumbling steps, at the rusting trash cans, and at his friends walking away arm in arm. He listened to something rustling behind the cans in the alley, to Bender singing, to the music still drifting out the doorway, and to the beating of his heart. And he remembered holding Leela in his arms, and how she had been happy. He concentrated to remember it all, every small detail, because this was a day he desperately wanted to remember for the rest of his life-_

He couldn't recall what had happened next. What had happened? Why was Bender now ignoring him, Amy avoiding him, and Leela hating him? What was he going to do?

But the memory was like a lullaby, lulling him to sleep as he remembered the loyalty of his friends and the Leela that he loved, and not the woman who had looked at him with such revulsion today. What he remembered had been real once, and maybe it would be again. He had to have faith. He hummed the first few bars of "Walking on Sunshine" to himself over and over again, but finally fell asleep humming the lament of an ancient cowboy ballad, dreaming of playing it on his holophoner. The holophoner again…

Too bad Laredo was now the brand name of a really effective laxative.

**END PART I**


	8. Part II, Chapter 1

_They were crowded into the basement of his parents' home, shoulder to shoulder. Despite their number, they didn't dare make a sound. They all stared up the stairway into the blackness. Something rustled upstairs._

_He looked around. His parents, his brother, his dog, Bender, Leela, Leela's parents, Leela—_

_He blinked. There was more than one Leela. In fact, there were several. There was an infant Leela, a teenage Leela, the Leela he was familiar with, and an—how would he put it?—a jiggly Leela._

"_The commies are coming," his father said. "We need to fight 'em."_

"_Dad, no, " Yancy muttered._

"_Quiet," said the familiar Leela, and the authority in her voice settled everyone down. For a moment._

_The rustling continued overhead. In fact, it seemed to be directly above him. He couldn't actually see the floorboards vibrate, but loose dirt trickled down onto his and everyone else's hair._

"_Just try not to think," Leela murmured in his ear._

_There was something funny about that—a joke somewhere--_

"_And don't try to think about why that's funny."_

_He nodded. Mind blank. That was the only way._

"_I'm scared," said the jiggly Leela._

_The familiar Leela closed her eye and took a deep breath. Don't think about why. Don't think at all._

"_Look, you—me—whatever. We're all scared, but we all have to be quiet."_

"_Fry, sweetie, are you going to let her talk to me like that?"_

"_Yes he is. And geez, Fry, didn't you ever think about gravity when imagining—those?"_

"_I thought we were supposed to be quiet and he was supposed to concentrate, " Yancy growled._

_Seymour began to whine._

_We can't sit there and let them find us like rats cowering away in the sewer, " Yancy Sr. said. "It's un-American. It's unmanly. I'm gonna try to take them out."_

_It wasn't working. He was listening too much. No, Dad. Don't go._

"_Dad, come back! Mom! Don't follow dad!"_

_Leela grabbed Yancy by the collar as his parents swiftly moved up the stairs, Yancy Sr. armed with a gun, his mother with a hockey stick. They disappeared into the darkness._

"_Don't make their sacrifice worthless."_

_The rustling stopped for a moment. Then it continued, more intense than before._

"_I can't stand it." _

_The jiggly Leela was starting to break down._

"_Maybe if we went to them, they'd let some of us stay. Maybe if he gave up his thing, they'd go away."_

_She was next to him now, rubbing along his side._

"_You've spent a lot of time with me, darling. Why don't you listen to me?" And she dropped her hand to his holophoner._

_There's a joke here, he thought. A dirty joke. It's dirty because a holophoner looks like a-_

"_That's enough, both of you. Fry, get your head out of the gutter and stop thinking. You, girl, are coming over here with me, where we can get better acquainted."_

"_I don't like you. You took him from me."_

"_He came to me, when he came to know himself better."_

_The jiggly Leela wormed out of Leela's grasp. "All of you, listen to me. It's hopeless. They're going to find us, all because of that stupid thing he won't let go of. We need to go to them!"_

_A wave of agitation swept through the group. Fry dared not look, he musn't think too much, but it was true, he had a death grip on his holophoner._

"_She's changing-"_

"_Oh no, her head."_

"_WE'RE COMING! WE'RE-"_

_The standard Leela clamped her hand over her duplicate, who struggled and—changed form. He was paying attention, he couldn't help it._

"_No Fry, don't, it has to be," Leela said. _

_And as the other Leela continued to lose form, the Leela he knew best did exactly what he knew she would do. She dragged the mutating mess up the stairway, away from the rest of them._

_The rustling upstairs stopped. Then the sound of something large and heavy slid across the floor and faded away._

_They're leaving, he thought, because they think I'll go to them for her._

_And they're right._

_He looked around the group and asked, how do I find her again? Is she left anywhere?_

"_Joy fades," hummed Munda,_

"_but pain endures," finished Morris._

_Why the hell couldn't anyone speak plainly around here! In frustration he took the holophoner played as fast as he could. The cloud swirled, and suddenly there was a portal into another room. A green room. A hospital room._

_And then he understood what he had to do-_

Fry woke up, startled. What the hell was he dreaming? That had been one of the strangest things he had ever imagined. He looked around, and his depression returned in force as he recognized the confines of his dumpster, and recalled the circumstances that had put him there. He peeked out. The rain clouds had left, and the sun was out, its rays reflecting in the many small rain puddles dotting the streets. The air smelled clean and crisp, and the world seemed ready for a fresh start.

Just great, thought Fry. What a waste of a beautiful morning. A glint of sunlight off a puddle caught his eye.

_And then he saw a glimmer in the rubble underneath one of the beams…._

_Maybe it he gave up this thing, they'd go away._

He wished he had his holophoner. But no time for that right now…

What could he do? He couldn't talk to Bender. He could go to Hermes, but what would he say that he hadn't said already? And what could Hermes do? Amy? He had a feeling that after yesterday he'd have a hard time approaching her. Bender? He couldn't even get him to stand still around him long enough to listen.

Leela? His stomach clenched into a ball as the memories of yesterday came rolling back. He was afraid of her, and not just afraid of a fist sandwich. Somehow he felt that something was out of whack, that something very serious had happened.

That someone or something was after him.

And when he thought of Leela, he couldn't shake off an instinct that something dangerous surrounded her, almost as if there was a trap being set and Leela was the bait…

He was lost. He couldn't do anything alone. What he really needed now, more than anything, was a friend.

Something moved behind the metal wall next to him, and Fry froze. There was a rustling sound, and the lid of the dumpster bowed in slightly. Fry's gut shriveled up in fear, but before he could start to whimper the dumpster lid flew open.

"My good friend Fry!"

A horrible alien face drooping with tentacles and tufts of cat hair looked down on him.

"Nesting, I see."

Fry dropped his head back onto the garbage bags in relief, only to regret that decision a second later, as one of the bags burst open.

"Oh, thank you!"

Doctor Zoidberg, M.D., clambered into the dumpster with Fry and began wiping up some of foul jelly oozing out of the bag with a week-old slice of pizza.

"And when will you be laying your egg? Soon I hope?"

Fry was looking for something cleaner than him to wipe his hair.

"Humans don't nest, Zoidberg."

"They don't? Then I have no need for this!" And he whipped out a small vidisk and threw it on the dumpster floor. Fry saw the words

HUMAN ANATOMY IN FIVE EASY STEPS. CORPSE AND SCALPEL NOT INCLUDED.

"Umm, Zoidberg? Are you mad at me too?"

"Zoidberg, mad? At Fry? My mating counselor?"

"Ah yeah, just checking. Everyone else seems mad at me. They also think I've been gone a long time. Have I?"

"Yes, many months you've been gone."

"Has anyone talked about why? Do you know anything?"

_Zoidberg sat at the conference table and looked around. Everyone was staring grimly at the table as Hermes droned on. Two seats were empty. He raised his claw._

"_Where are our friends Fry and Leela?"_

_Nobody listened. Nobody answered. Everyone ignored him._

_It was just another typical day to forget._

"Why are you crying?"

"I missed my friend Fry. When Leela came back, I thought Fry would come soon too."

Fry felt better knowing that at least Zoidberg missed him, but then again, he was desperate.

"Why did I leave?"

Zoidberg shrugged, distracted by the pile of alien diapers.

Fry felt his stomach lurch as he realized what Zoidberg was about to do, and he pushed open the dumpster lid and climbed out. His eye caught the sight of some costumes in the adjacent dumpster compartment. He was puzzled for a moment, then remembered that Freedom Day had happened recently, and people could dress however they wanted. Kinda like Halloween, he guessed. He grabbed a wad of clothes, including what looked like a white sailor's cap, and started rubbing his hair briskly.

"Well, I guess I'll try to go to Planet Express again. Is Leela around?"

"Not yet she is".

Relieved, Fry jogged across the street to the entrance doors. However, as he approached the door a loud alarm went off, and moments later Hermes appeared behind the door.

"Hi, Hermes-"

"I t'ought dat you might come today." Hermes stepped outside.

"Fry, I regret to inform you that you can no longer come within 100 meters of Planet Express buildin'."

"Why?"

"I renegotiated Leela's contract yesterday, and dat was one of the conditions. You don work here anymore, and you are not allowed to wait aroun' here. The Professor put up a sensory field that detects your presence. Dat girl is real mad at you for some reason."

Somehow, Fry wasn't as surprised as he should have been.

"Why?"

"Not my business. In fact Guideline 58-27#4 explicitly states that I am not allowed to care about personnel relationship issues. I just manage the bus'ness. And as manager my job is to keep the best employee we've ever had here. And if dat means you have to go, you go."

"Can I still come in?"

Zoidberg had walked up behind Fry, clasping his claws hopefully. Hermes blew air out of his cheeks, exasperated.

"Yes, you're still allowed in," he said reluctantly.

"Hooray, I'm more popular than someone else!" And Zoidberg hugged Fry. Shaking his head, Hermes walked back inside, but not before warning, "I'm sorry, but you need to keep away from the door. You should go back to the Career Assignment Officer where you first registered your career chip. They can help you dere."

And the door shut.

"Zoidberg, I need your help."

"Really?" Zoidberg looked like the happiness fairy had just given him a quarter.

"I need you to go in and bring Bender outside. I need to talk with him. Don't tell them I'm here, though."

"Oh, secrets! Lemme get my spy shell-"

"Uh yeah, don't need the spy outfit right now. Just go in and get Bender to come outside. As far away from this building as you can, so you get past this detector thingie!"

He watched as the Decapodian waddled into the building, then walked back toward the dumpster. Somehow the fact that someone was still on his side made all the difference in the world, even if that someone was Zoidberg.

He was not used to planning things on his own. Heck, we wasn't used to planning at all. But now was the moment. He had to rely on his own wits now, and come up with a clever and sophisticatory plan….


	9. Part II, Chapter 2

An hour later Bender walked out the side door of Planet Express, followed by Zoidberg.

"This way, robut."

"I still say that robots don't need a prostate exam, but who am I to argue with a bribe?" Bender grumbled. "And I'm dying to know—since when did you get money? I'm going to have to start breaking into your office more often." He stopped short. "Whoa, hang on here! What are we doing outside?"

"Over this way, please, about a hundred meters." They crossed the street. "Here." And they stopped by the dumpster.

"NOW!" Fry shouted, as he tackled Bender. The robot was heavy, but Fry managed to knock him on the ground.

"Who were you yelling at?", asked Zoidberg.

"I wanted to let myself know when to jump him." Fry picked up his stick. The next step in his complicated strategy was to beat his friend with something until he started to listen to him. Actually, that was the only step in his strategy.

"Awww, how cute and helpless, he is," said Zoidberg.

Fry looked down. By accident he had knocked Bender on his back, and the robot was flailing his arms and legs around, unable to move. Oh yeah, the turtle thing. But he kept the stick anyway, as he knelt down next to Bender, just in case. He was in a bad mood.

Bender rolled his eyes over to Fry, then immediately snapped his visor shut, and began humming a tune.

"Hello!" Fry shouted. No response. "I'm here, Bender. Why don't you talk to me? Why is everyone mad at me?" The humming continued, off-key.

Fry stood up and paced back and forth, as Zoidberg alternated between watching him and eying the dumpster. Fry stopped. While he wasn't the sharpest tool in the toolbox, he had also lived with his friend for four years. He knelt back down.

"I'll pay you to listen to me."

The humming stopped, but the visor remained shut.

"How much ya got?"

Fry felt his pockets. All empty.

"I'll pay you as soon as I can."

The humming started up again. Fry turned to Zoidberg. "Do you have any-"

Then he realized who he was talking to.

"Oh, never mind." He ran over to the dumpster and searched the pile of clothing he had used to wipe himself down that morning. Ah, a quarter. He crouched back down next to Bender.

"I can pay you a little now."

The humming stopped.

"How much ya got?"

"A quarter."

The humming started again, but Fry didn't despair, because he was staring at the pile of clothing. There was one thing Bender loved almost as much as money or waffles. Fry snapped up the white sailor's cap from the pile of clothes next to him.

"And you can have this sailor cap. Look, it even has a button on top."

Bender's eyes opened and scanned the cap. The LEDs in his eyes brightened slightly, and Fry knew that for the first time in two days that he was getting somewhere.

"Will you still keep paying me not to look for you?"

Puzzled, but eager to say anything to keep his attention, Fry said, "Sure."

"Paid to talk and not to talk to you. I still have some things to learn about humans," mused the bending unit, as he twirled the coin in his hand, while still laying on his back. "I'm gonna smoke."

"Why were you ignoring me?" Fry coughed through the cigar smoke.

"Ya paid me to."

"Who did?"

"You, you moron. You paid me one dollar a week to keep me from going with you when you left, and not to look for you."

"Wait, I told you I was leaving?" And then a second thing hit Fry. "And all it took to stop you from coming with me was a measly dollar a week?"

Bender held up two hands: one empty, one with the quarter.

"Which hand is worth more?"

"The one with the coin, I guess."

"Bingo." His pet was dumb, but with patience, could be taught.

"OK, fine. So if I pay you two dollars a week you'll talk with me from now on?"

"Fry, good buddy, glad you're back. It was getting so boring around here, and Big Boots is getting' _mean_. I mean, she's less fun now than when you were around, and that's sayin' something. Lift me up, here."

Fry tried to lift up Bender, but couldn't do it. Then he saw a red claw grab the other arm, and together he and Zoidberg hauled Bender up. Funny how he kept forgetting about Zoidberg.

"Can I have a cap too?" Zoidberg asked.

"Later, sure," Fry nooded absently, still looking at Bender.

"How long have I been gone, Bender?"

"Three hundred sixty-three days, ten hours, 14 minutes, five seconds, 46 millseconds, 50 microseconds, starting… now."

Fry was amazed. Where had he been?

"When did I last talk to you?"

Bender had pulled a small mirror out of his chest and was admiring the sailor's cap on his head, trying to tilt it at a rakish angle.

"Let's see, the night after that dance lesson you and Miss Charming dragged me too. Not that I'm complaining. I made a killing that night. Anyway, I had a big party at my apartment to celebrate, and was scoring really well with the ladies, you showed up and blew the moment, told me you were going, said you'd pay me, then left."

"I didn't say why? I didn't say what happened?"

Bender was silent for a moment, then responded.

"Nope. But you sure were gone the next day, and like you said one dollar a week showed up in my account. Big boots vanished too, but came back four months later. Wouldn't say where she'd been. And it's been boring ever since."

There was something in Bender's voice that made Fry think that he might have successfully bargained his friendship down to a dollar and a half per week.

The cigar had burned down to a stub.

"Well, this is all well and good, but I've got scams to plan, message boards to lurk…"

"I need to get into my apartment."

"Oh, that." Bender chuckled. "I sold all your stuff, you said I could. But yeah, sure."

OK, that was a start, right? Go to the apartment, take a shower, then do something. But why did he have a bad feeling about going by his apartment?

He came too, and saw both Zoidberg and Bender looking at him. Now what?

Fry could think of only one thing to do. He handed a folded piece of paper to Bender.

"Give this to Leela for me. Tell her she needs to read it."

Bender put on his monocle and opened the letter.

" 'Leela, please talk to me. Why don't you like me anymore?' Waxin' poetic, I see. Well, maybe she'll read it, but maybe—"

Bender computed the potential consequences, then handed the letter to Zoidberg.

"I'll let you do it. Because I want you to feel important."

"Hurray! I'm useful."

At that moment the side door to the Planet Express building opened, and Amy peeked out. Her voice carried faintly across the street.

"Zoidberg, have you seen Bender? Leela's getting really—" she stopped mid-sentence, looking at Fry, who rose from his crouch by Bender.

"Amy," he began, but couldn't finish as Amy gave him a strong slap across the face. Wow, how did she move so quickly?

"How could you?" she hissed. "Sleesh. How could you even _talk_ about such things with her? Use me like that? Use _her_ like that? And yes, I know," she said, looking at Fry's confused expression. "She dropped me some hints last night, and I figured out enough to know you're one of the worst things that ever happened to her." And then she spit out a stream of Cantonese invective that probably would have made Fry blush, if he could have understood it.

"Oh, and Bender?" she turned her head. "Leela says that if you don't show up now, she's going to make you talk to the ship's computer again. And maybe, maybe, I'll even tell her who you're talking to out here." And she spun around and marched back inside.

"Coffin stuffer," Bender muttered as the door slammed shut behind Amy. "Help me. What did ya do to the purple meatsicle anyway? I thought you were all mush-mush and kissy-kissy over her?"

"You don't know either?"

"Seeing how much she talks, bosses me around, and complains about her social life, you'd think I'd know by now. But nope, not a clue." He swiveled his head toward Fry. "Now what? Said meatsicle is probably coming right now."

"O'Zorgnax's pub, this afternoon" Fry snapped, hurrying around the corner, trying to convince himself that it was clever, and not cowardly, to avoid meeting Leela right now. He had to get money, quickly. Where was he going to do that?

Something glinted in the corner of his eye. He turned and saw the afternoon rays of the sun reflect off a rapidly drying rain puddle.

_And then he saw a glimmer in the rubble underneath one of the beams…._

_Maybe it he gave up this thing, they'd go away._

And for some reason he thought about his holophoner again.

"Ah, yes, we remember you very good. Look, mama, is the Fry boy."

"Oooh, yes. You no come see us no more. Why?"

Good question. Fry and his friends had spent a lot of time helping the Cygnoids out with their pizza store across the street, and then next week had stopped visiting them completely, and had forgotten about them for years. His life at PE had been fairly episodic that way.

"Umm, you smell good. Really tasty. You want be cook?"

He still hadn't been able to wipe the ooze completely out of his hair. And now he remembered why he had never come back to this place.

"I need to make some money real quick. Can I do something for you?"

"Here, you a-hungri? Have some pizza. Cockroaches home grown."

"Um, thanks, but I really need to make some Earthican money."

"Oh, mama, we get to have first human worker!" Papa Cygnoid beamed. He looked around and opened up an oven. "Here, you can a-crawl in here and scrapa out the bottom. We need more toppings and this will sava us some money."

Fry looked into the dark cavern of the oven. Why did he seem to remember climbing into a dark and narrow place recently?

"Heresa brush. Oh, one thing. Mama here very forgetful, so if she shut the door on you, and you start to feel hot, kicka hard on the side. Makea sure you kicka real hard. We don't hava ears like you, we only feel vibration. Oh here." And he shoved a bottle of BBQ sauce in Fry's hand.

"Why this?"

"Just in case we enda up cooking you by accident, put this on you. We think you go good with this."


	10. Part II, Chapter 3

"How'd it go?"

"Vunderful!"

Zoidberg was happier than he had been in months. Sitting here, in O'Zorgnax's, with not just one friend, but two! And with food in front of him! On plates!

"You showed her the note?"

"Oh yes! And then she took it and pushed it down my throat, really deep into my subcraw, and said I should keep it where Earth's sunlight would not touch it. It was so thoughtful of her! My subcraw needed opening very badly. And your note has not seen sunlight since!" A small tear formed at the corner of his eye at the thoughtfulness of the PE captain.

"Did she read it?"

"Hmmm… I think she forgot to do that." He brightened. "But here, she gave you a piece of paper back."

Fry unfolded the paper:

"_Pitiful, using your friends to do what you're too afraid to do yourself. I thought I was clear. Let me make it clearer. I would rather sleep with Zapp again than talk with you. This is your last warning. If you try to send me another letter, or try to contact me or my parents in any way, I will notify the police and prosecute you for stalking. Go away, and let me move on_."

He had to read it a couple of times for it to sink in. Absently, part of him admired how even her writing was on the unlined paper. Suddenly the note burst into flames, and he quickly dropped the shriveling paper onto the table top.

"Ah, mood paper," Bender mused. "Changes to reflect the emotions of the sender. If she ever sees you again, I hope your ass has fire insurance."

Fry watched the paper crumble into ashes and felt that he was watching his hopes whither away. He still felt so shocked about recent events that he couldn't muster much feeling for anything right now. He was really scared about what he would feel when the enormity of the situation finally hit him.

Bender held out his hand, and Fry dropped a coin into it. Bender opened his chest and adjusted what looked like a 20th-century parking meter, except that the words "Friendship" were digitally displayed above the needle, which was now pointing to the "24 hour" label.

"I broke into her locker, to see if there was anything that I could ransom to make her talk with you," Bender continued. "Nothing. And Nibbler's not around. She keeps him at her apartment these days." There was a hint of disappointment in the robotic voice. He would have enjoyed holding the fuzzball hostage.

"Will you pay me to be your friend, too?" Zoidberg said, eyes gleaming.

"Sure, why not," Fry sighed, and dropped another coin into Zoidberg's claw. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to have Zoidberg hang around Bender after all. He crossed his arms and lowered his head to rest on them.

"So, it's been fun and good, but now what? You going to go work somewhere else? You coming back to stay with me?" Bender said, while eying the coin that Zoidberg was tasting.

Yes, now what? He could go back to the apartment. But for some reason his stomach clenched at the thought and his heart started to murmur worriedly. Why was he so jumpy? He looked around, just in time to catch a flash of afternoon sunlight reflecting off Bender's head.

_First the tone, then the tempo, then the tune…_

"Bender, where's my holophoner?"

For some reason, he had been thinking of his favorite musical instrument all afternoon, as he had been scrubbing the ovens. He had actually been carrying a new one the night of the dance lesson. He had been planning to give it to Leela as a gift, but couldn't actually remember ever giving it to her...

Bender scratched his chin, producing a sound like a knife being sharpened. "Funny you should ask that…"

"_Put on protective gear."_

_Hermes, Farnsworth, Bender, and Zoidberg stood in front of Fry's locker. Hermes and Farnsworth placed on their protective hoods, and Hermes loaded his laser rifle. Fry had been gone for almost three months and the time had come to clean out his locker. _

_Bender had already been through the locker a few times, privately, and had sold anything worth more than the power needed to steal it to the pawn shop. But when Farnsworth had come into the lounge and asked him to break into the locker, he figured he'd give it one more scan._

"_Now remember," Farnsworth said, "I'm trying to replace my indestructible life form, so I need to gather biological samples from harsh, toxic environments. It occurs to me that Fry's locker may have rich possibilities. Don't touch anything once the locker is open, unless it tries to attack me!"_

_Bender broke the lock, which was very easy. This is why he never stored anything valuable in his own locker. Zoidberg sniffed the air with quivering anticipation._

"_Mmmm. Something good has been ripening in there, it has."_

"_Keep your trap shut, you dirty lobsta. You're only here 'cause we need a health clearance from the company doctor after we clean up. So don't eat anythin'!_

_The locker was empty except for a bunch of empty Slurm cans, a pile of dirty clothes on the floor, and a rainbow coalition of slime molds on the sides. Farnsworth scraped samples of everything, and then using remotely-operated clamps, started transferring the cans and the clothes into a specially designed biological isolation disposal unit, otherwise known as a trash can._

_Something fell out from the pile of clothes and clattered onto the floor._

_Hermes, Bender, and Zoidberg threw up their arms in front of their eyes. When nothing exploded, attacked, or screamed, they peeked at the object. Fry's holophoner sat on the ground. Oh yeah, he'd seen that before in there. But these babies weren't worth that much. Well, that wasn't true. It just seemed that one of his extrapolating scenario projectors (ESP) was maladjusted, for it kept predicting that if the instrument stayed in the locker, maybe his pet would return one day after all. Almost what stupid humans called a "superstition." He kept intending to get his ESP fixed, but kept putting it off, because it seemed to help when betting on horse races._

"_Hmm, yes, very interesting," mumbled Farnsworth._

"_Yeah, why would Fry leave dis?" said Hermes._

"_Huh? No, no, no, I mean these slime molds. Now excuse me and get back to work!"_

_Zoidberg grabbed the instrument as the cackling Professor left._

"_Oh boy! Zoidberg always wanted one of these! I have 8 copies of Fry's CD!"_

"_Gimme that," Hermes said. "Dat's now company property."_

"_No," Zoidberg whimpered, clutching the pipe to his exoskeleton anxiously. "I want to keep it."_

_Hermes opened his mouth, and then thought about it._

"_Fine. It's not worth the effort. I'll just fill out a __Floccinaucinihilipilification__ form for it. I'd better not hear you playin' it on company time!"_

"_Me?" said Zoidberg innocently, crossing his claws._

"Yeah, I remember keeping it in my locker," Fry said. In the weeks after his opera performance, he had started taking the instrument to work and playing it in the evenings on the roof of Planet Express, hoping that Leela would accidentally hear him play whenever she worked late, which was practically every night. She had never mentioned hearing it one way or the other before last night—that is, last year.

He loved that instrument. If he really had left, why hadn't he taken it with him?

Fry turned to Zoidberg. "So you have it, then?"

Zoidberg hung his head, "Not exactly."

_He carefully slid the instrument through his claws and inserted the mouthpiece between his feelers. Humans were able to use their nose to play this thing, but he didn't have one, so he was stuck using his mouth._

_The holophoner had been hidden in his office for two weeks, and he was very proud that the robut hadn't found it yet. He had put it inside a tall jar labeled "healthy snacks," and that had seemed to do the trick. And for the past week, late at night after all had gone home, he had been trying to play._

_Carefully he inserted the reed between his feelers, and tried to blow. Nothing, just like the past few nights. He slumped in disappointment. Wait. Maybe he should try to clench this button—_

_An off-key wailing tone blew out of the holophoner, and a light mist wound out of its end, dispersing quickly._

_He tried a few more times, and even squeezed out a few more sounds, when there was a knock on the door and someone stepped in._

"_My good friend Leela, you're back! And you look so healthy!"_

_And it was true. The bag under her eye was loose, she was a healthy shade of pale, and she had lost so much weight he could see some skin hanging loose on her upper arm, always a good sign for an upcoming molt._

"_Hello, Zoidberg. Yes, I'm back. Just got in a few minutes ago. Say, did you hear some strange sounds coming from around here?"_

"_No," he said, trying to nonchalantly lower the holophoner behind his back, but he apparently could not pull off nonchalance, because her eye narrowed and focused on him. Very unnerving, that eye was._

"_What's that behind your back? And why's there smoke in here?"_

_Zoidberg raised his arms to mimic the human's sign of cluelessness, but he forgot that the instrument was in one claw. How clueless of him._

_Leela took the instrument out of his hands, and rubbed it absently. Without looking up, she said, "Is Fry back?"_

"_No, he's been gone for a few lunar cycles. No one has heard from him. It's strange. No one seems to want to look for him."_

"_No, no one does." She was staring at him again. "So I guess he doesn't need this anymore. Whose is it?"_

"_Mine."_

_She looked surprised, then smiled, tight-lipped._

"_You were his greatest fan, weren't you. How much for it?"_

"_I'm sorry, I cannot accept any offers."_

"_Elzars."_

"_Take it, it's yours."_

"You mean Leela has it?" Fry groaned.

Zoidberg licked his feelers dreamily. "Yes, a good meal that was. Leela even made sure that we sat down in a place where no one would see us together, so we could eat in private. Wasn't that vunderful of her?"

Bender was bored. "Yeah, yeah, motor-mouth is almost as great as me, except she's not. So why am I caring about this thing, or why she has it?"

Good question. The more he thought about it, the stronger Fry felt that he needed that holophoner, He couldn't remember his dreams, but he somehow felt that if he could only get to his instrument, it would unlock his nightmare.

"It's important. Really important. I just know it. So does Leela play it?" Maybe she took it because she missed him. An ember of hope glowed in his thoughts. Maybe he could approach her after all. Maybe that instrument could bring them together again, as it had done-

_No, Leela, don't let them do it. Please…_

A piercing headache made him gasp as the words jumped, unbidden, into his mind. He had almost remembered something. But then it was gone, and he realized Bender was speaking.

"Nope, never heard it. It's not even at Planet Express."

"Howd' you know?"

"Not in her locker or other personal places. I know, cause I break into everyone's private stashes once a week, just to check up on things, you know?"

"Aw, geez, then it's gotta be-"

"-at her apartment, yeah. Unless she's thrown it away."

The ember inside him faded away. For a moment he had actually felt some hope that things could get better. But he might as well ask the Robot Devil for his hands again. Yet, somehow, the feeling of urgency didn't go away. He shuddered and looked around. He felt like he was running out of time. But running out of time to do what?

"Maybe you can go and ask her to give it back to you," Zoidberg said.

"Yeah, if you do, can I come watch?" Bender laughed. "I've never seen a human pretzel before."

"You said a long time ago", continued Zoidberg, "that you should let the female talk a lot, and you should say you're sorry a lot, and that you vere wrong and she was right, and then everything goes back to the way it was before."

"_A part of me, a part of me I'm not proud of, wants to hurt you now."_

"I don't think that'll work this time," Fry said, rubbing his throat at the point where Leela had rolled her forearm over his windpipe. He thought she was serious about setting the police onto him.

"Well, unless you're gonna break into her apartment, I think you had better start learning to play the kazoo," said Bender. He opened his mouth, reached in, and pulled one out. "Here ya go."

Fry kept staring at the table. Could he talk to her? Could he wait outside PE each day, hammering away at her until she would at least explain what was going on? Day after day, week after week…

"Okay", he said.

"Yeah, it's pretty easy to learn-"

"No, I mean, OK, I think I'll do something less dangerous than talking with her," he said. He looked up.

"How would you break into her apartment?"


	11. Part II, Chapter 4

The summer night breeze was gentle, yet Fry pulled his red jacket tighter around his neck and shivered. He shuffled back and forth on his feet, trying to stay in the shadows, as he watched Leela's apartment building across the street. Bender, by contrast, stood completely still, as if he were switched off. It was kinda eerie, because Bender was the fidgetiest machine he had ever known, even when not trying to pick your pocket.

"_What's this 'we' you're talkin' about, bloodbag?"_

"_It's in her apartment. I need to have it. I need to go."_

It hadn't take long for Bender to warm to the idea as a challenge worthy of his greatness, and within minutes he had been planning the heist with enthusiasm. Zoidberg was eager to help too, but Bender had convinced him that guarding the dumpster was a key part of the plan, and the good doctor had cheerfully volunteered to play his part. So now the young man and the robot watched the street LEDs light up as darkness shrouded the alley.

A daytime breakin was out—too many people around, and Bender had to go on most deliveries with Leela. So that left night. Which was a problem, because Leela typically would go straight home.

Except for one night of the week, apparently. And now Leela emerged from the main entrance in her familiar lime-green jacket, but Fry caught glimpses of a yellow dress around her feet. She glanced up and down the street, as the door opened again behind her, and Amy emerged with Nibbler on a leash.

Nibbler. That had been another conundrum.

"_What's a connudorum? Don't you buy those at a drugstore?"_

"_It means a problem, meatbag, a problem. Now shut up and pay attention."_

When stealin' was on your mind, facing down an animal that could swallow you whole was something you wanted to avoid. Fortunately, Bender had overhead that Amy would take Nibbler for a long walk this evening, so that Leela could go to her ballroom dance lessons, which she had done regularly ever since she had returned to Planet Express months ago. So for an hour or so during the dance lesson Leela's apartment would be empty. And it just so happened that tonight had been the night.

The news that Leela went dancing regularly bothered Fry, but he couldn't place the reason for his disquiet. So he had spent the rest of day wandering random streets, riding random airtubes, too nervous to sit still, too wary to go back to Bender's apartment, too pumped to sleep, and too afraid to dream.

The two women seemed to be smiling ferociously at each other, while avoiding each other's eyes as much as possible. Nibbler whined and strained at the leash, sniffing the air. The petite Asian woman could barely cling to the leash as the little alien started to pull her across the street. Towards them.

Bender nudged Fry's elbow, and they retreated back through the alley. In a few minutes they had cut through a chain link fence and were in a different alley, directly behind Leela's apartment building. It looked relatively new, and it was, since it had been heavily rebuilt just a few weeks—well, over a year ago now, apparently. He still could not believe that he'd been gone a year.

"OK, ready to go up there?" Bender spoke in his whispering mode.

"Why this way again?"

Bender sighed. They'd been through this already. "Big boots, for some strange reason, decided to install the best locks in the business on her door. I learned this the twelfth time I tried to break into her place to hold her diary for ransom. I had better things to do with my time, so I've left it alone since. But she has a window in her bedroom now. And I can tell from here she doesn't have it alarmed."

Fry looked up. Apartment 1I. First floor. Made sense there was no alarm. There was no ladder.

"Um, tell me again how we're getting up there?"

"Not we. You. Like this." And with that Bender seized Fry's leg, spun the delivery boy around his head, and tossed him high in the air, like a high school graduate tossing a hat. Now all the cute little moron had to do was push the suction cups against the window and then use the handy little cutter from his BabysFirstBurglary kit.

He detected the sound of soft and squishy flesh meeting hard and cold glass. Then nothing.

Oh, that's right. He'd forgotten to give him the suction cups.

Bender stretched up his arms just in time to keep the falling delivery boy from splattering on the pavement.

"Hehehe. Sorry. Here ya go. Now you've had practice. Piece of cake, right?"

The delivery boy's face was pale and clammy, and he was shivering everywhere, despite the warm night.

"Throw me up again before I throw up."

"Remember, even if you don't find that musical thing of yours, you gotta bring back something to make this worth my time. Has to be at least worth fifty bucks. Otherwise, don't bother coming back out."

Once again, Fry smacked into the glass, but managed to get a purchase on the smooth surface with one of the suction cups. He activated the glass cutter and slipped into the bedroom. He opened a piece of paper that contained a list of instructions from Bender.

"Read me." Simple enough.

"Seal the window. That means put the piece of glass back in and use the laser."

Fry placed the section of cut glass back into its matching hole in the window. The little MyLittleLaser sealed the glass back into place.

"Open the window for quick getaway."

He unlatched the window and opened it.

"Fifty bucks," he heard from below. "And you got about fifty minutes left before her lesson ends."

Fry shut the window, then turned around and surveyed the room. He started to realize how foolhardy this entire thing was. He was breaking into the room of one of the most dangerous people he knew, based on little more than a hunch. Maybe he should have tried to talk to her first…

"I can't maintain my wait mode forever," he heard from outside.

Leela's room was always gray and spare even when fully lit. And now, shrouded in the dark, the sharp outlines of the room seemed almost sinister. In fact, as Fry stood he could almost image hearing something rustling in the walls…

He shook his head, and scanned the list Bender had compiled for him. "Bedroom". Um, he'd do that later. The living room first.

Not much here, other than the sofa and the TV, and he finished quickly, much to his relief, since he had died here last year and didn't like the memory. Next on Bender's list: "Kitchen".

It was really hard to find, and by the time he started riffling through the refrigerator, he felt that he was behind schedule. And by the time he realized that a holophoner could not possibly fit inside a mayonnaise jar, he had already opened every jar in the fridge, and now he was definitely behind. He opened the freezer and groaned. A month's worth of pre-cooked meals lay wrapped inside. He pulled out Bender's list.

_Don't bother with the freezer, dummy. And remember that the flute thing can't fit into a jar._

Oh, OK. Man, he never knew how many nooks and crannies there were in a kitchen, and how many really nasty chemicals there were to spill on yourself. And now he was really in trouble with time. But finally he was done with the kitchen. That left the bedroom.

The bedroom had actually been first on Bender's list, but Fry hadn't been able to bring himself to start there. Leela was such a private person that rifling through her clothes almost felt like violating her. Besides, he remembered only humiliation and disappointment in this room. But he was out of options. And time.

He closed his eyes while running his hands through the underclothes in her dresser. He felt that he was close to taking the offramp to Pervertville. He did not want to go to Pervertville. Nothing here. Then he noticed the nightstand, and the single picture that stood on it. He picked it up. Leela was in a ballroom gown, leaning back, staring across the photo to a man, in a nice dancing outfit, who was also leaning back. The pair had grasped each other's arms to prevent each other from falling backward. The disquiet Fry felt over learning about Leela's dance lessons grew as he saw the smile whe wore in the photo.

He had seen this guy before. Just two days ago—or a year ago. The guy at the dance. Gary. But why a photo on her nightstand-?

The world began to blur at the corners of his eyes, and the floor was like quicksand underneath his feet. No, no, no, he told himself. This is not happening. This can't be happening. Why hadn't Bender said anything? He had almost been able to suppress the memory of Leela's venom-filled look at him, pretend that it was something temporary, but here he was holding solid, undeniable proof that the world had changed on him. Absently, he fumbled the photo back into place and started feeling under the bed and between the mattresses. No, no, no. Find the holophoner. It will make everything clear. And for a moment he thought he imagined something heavy sliding on the floor above--

Finally there was only one place left. Her wall closet stood across the room from him, covering almost the entire width of the wall. The mirrored sliding door stood partly open, and he could only see darkness beyond, like the mouth of a cave. And now his courage, already strained to its limits, broke, and he whimpered in fear. He was glad he had gone to the bathroom before starting this.

And at that moment he heard the entry door into the apartment open.


	12. Part II, Chapter 5

"Thanks for inviting me in

"Thanks for inviting me in."

"Oh, no, my pleasure, Gary. I've wanted to bring you here for a while."

Luckily, Fry had closed the door to the living room behind him. A slit of light appeared underneath the door as Leela switched the living room lights on.

"I really need some coffee. Want some?"

"Love some."

"Let me put on some music, here."

He really should be getting out of here. Then why wasn't he moving? The closet. He wasn't done.

"I liked that pretzel move. You were amazing tonight. But then, you've been amazing every night."

"Thank you. I just love dancing so much."

"And I just love watching you."

There was a pause that even Fry could tell was awkward.

"I'm sorry I haven't brought you here earlier. I know we've been-talking-for a while. But then… something happened at work yesterday—"

"Oh?"

"An ex-boyfriend showed up at Planet Express and it started me thinking about my future."

Fry frowned. When he had been at Planet Express yesterday, he couldn't remember seeing Chaz or Adaili during his misadventures there. Man, it must have been crowded in that building that day…

"Anyway, I'm sorry I've been so distant over these months."

"Oh no, please. I know you've gone through some rough times over the past year. And you need time to heal from things like that. Believe me, I know."

"Yes, you've hinted at that. Sounds like you've had a bit of a tragic and mysterious past yourself."

"Yes, and I'm sorry, I can't quite bring myself to talk about it right now."

"Well, there's plenty of time to talk. Amy isn't bringing Nibbler home tonight." When she next spoke, her voice was a little higher-pitched than the calm, competent tone Fry knew and adored. "Why don't I get into something more comfortable?"

Why did women always insist on wearing things that weren't comfortable? Fry wondered. I mean, why not just be comfortable in the first place?

He looked around and saw that he was now in the closet. His body had dashed into it while his mind had been preoccupied. Why had it done that?

The door into the bedroom opened. Oh, that's why.

The closet was wide and deep, and he found himself staring past what seemed to be an endless procession of identical white shirts and black pants marching down into the gloom of the other end of the closet. His body had decided it couldn't afford to wait for his brain to catch up, and it had already dropped to all fours and had been crawling away from the crack in the door, squeezing himself between the back side of the mirrored sliding door and a very long boot rack that held what seemed to be countless copies of Leela's signature footwear. Huh, he never knew she had more than one set of boots.

Why was his body moving so quickly? He thought. Then he heard a voice say, very quietly,

"Time to do this. Time to live again."

And he heard footsteps heading toward the closet. And his brain suddenly pieced together that if a woman wanted to change clothes she was going to spend time looking into her closet. And his body, although relieved that it was no longer on its own, froze in panic, scared to make a sound as Leela stopped in front of the closet.

Something fell and broke in the kitchen.

"Damn, sorry. Don't know why I'm so fidgety."

The footsteps moved away from the closet and left the room. Fry's body and brain called a truce and he moved on down the length of the closet.

Ah, finally he saw dresses and formal-wear, and a couple of empty hangers. Beyond was the far wall of the closet, and he crawled quickly, pushing his head under the dresses.

"Oh, that's OK. There's plenty more cups."

"Do you have a broom?"

"Better. A laser gun."

The sound of the laser beam vaporizing the cup shards startled Fry, and he knocked one of the dresses off the hanger. Fortunately, Leela apparently hadn't heard the slight sound of the hanger landing on his head, as she was now in the kitchen.

Hands shaking, he lifted his arm over his head and hooked the dress back onto the rack. He moved on past the dresses and was within touching distance of the other end of the closet.

And then he saw it. The Negligee. It had always been The Negligee with a capital N since that night he had seen her wear it in bed, looking at him, smiling, happy to see him, almost –relieved?

And then he had insisted on removing the worms and playing the holophoner again…

The holophoner. He looked around. A pile of boxes sat against the far wall, also leaning against the sliding door. OK, that meant she couldn't slide open the door on this end.

And what was that behind the Negligee? Holy smokes! What was she saving that outfit for? He knew he was entering the city limits of Pervertville.

Just as he pulled himself into a crouch against the boxes, he heard footsteps again. And then the sliding door began to open.

Fry pressed his back against the far wall, not daring to breathe, or even think loudly, as the door slowly kept rolling back, and the shirts, pants, boots, and finally dresses lit up with the light of the bedroom. The door opened as far as it could, and then a hand followed by an enormous forearm reached around the door, snaked down the rail, pulled the rest of the dresses back, and then The Negligee. The bottom half of the Negligee brushed against Fry's hair as she pulled it out.

It was starting to dawn on Fry that he might be sitting here a long time, and that he was about to experience the worst night of his life. Please, no, don't make him sit through this, listen to this…

Leela's shadow lay across the clothes, unmoving, for a few moments, as if in indecision. And then the door slid shut, and he heard steps walking back out of the room.

Quickly he moved his hands around the boxes he was sitting on, finding nothing but packed clothes, and then realized there was a small shelf above his head. He stood up, hunched, in the closest, and shoved his hand over the shelf. He felt a box, but then winced in pain and jerked his hand back. A small I.V. needle attached to some tubing was sticking in his hand.

"Gary, I'm so sorry, but I'm suddenly not feeling very well. Could I axe you to take a rain check for tonight? I promise I'll make it up to you. Really."

Fry heard the light-hearted tone that males throughout the universe use to mask disappointment, as he struggled to keep himself from sighing out loud in relief.

"Of course. I'm sorry about that. I had no idea."

Fry pulled out the needle, lifted up his arm again, and pulled the box down.

It was his holophoner. Not the one he had planned to give as a gift to her, but his original one he had played at the opera. His heart was now pounding so loudly he was surprised that the couple in the living room couldn't hear it. He flipped open the lid. All the pieces were there. But the skies didn't open, and angels didn't sing. The pieces just sat gleaming in the dull gloom of the closet.

There was some squeaking as someone stood up from the couch.

"I'm sorry about this. I really will make it up to you. You've been so good, so patient with me. And thank you for never mentioning my eye."

"There's something wrong with your eye?"

A guttural growl escaped from Fry, and he crouched back down. Now what was he going to do? And then his hand brushed something on the floor. Something soft.

There was a long pause that may or may not have involved a kiss. Then the front door shut.

Fry pulled up the small object and found himself looking at a raggedy doll. One of the eyes had been carefully removed, and the other re-sewn to create a small Cyclops that smiled up at him. His heart melted. He had never known that Leela kept toys from her childhood at the orphanarium. It was such a gentle side to her that contrasted so strongly with her recent behavior the past few days, that he hugged the doll gratefully, and felt a small measure of comfort gained in the middle of this whirlwind of change.

The door to the bedroom opened again, and he heard Leela walk across the room. OK, he would have to stay here overnight, and wait until she left in the morning. But he might live if he could only keep his bladder from exploding, and if Bender would not get bored with everything and decide to throw a firecracker.

There was an enormous crash, as if Leela had knocked over a large piece of furniture. That's OK, thought Fry. She's simply rearranging the furniture. At eleven o'clock at night.

Then he heard a sharp and metallic click, a sound that he had heard many times on deliveries, usually around unhappy customers.

OK, he thought. That's not a gun. She's simply unclasping her bra. A really metallic, well oiled—

"You should know I've notified the police, that I have a gun, and that I am well-protected. Open the door very slowly."

He didn't flinch a muscle.

"I would never hang the purple dress left of the green dress. The purple dress is always the 24th item hanging from the left of the closet. I know you're in there, and I'm not scared to shoot. It'll be a pain in the butt to explain to the landlord, but I'm perfectly happy to shoot. On the count of three, open the door."

Seeking guidance, Fry looked over Bender's list.

"If Leela finds you, I was never here."

Fry shoved the list and the holophoner into his jacket.

"One".

Frantically he shoved the small doll into the same pocket and started to stand up.

"Two".

He worked his way across the closet and reached his hand around the door. Taking a deep breath, he slid open the door.

Welcome to Pervertville.

Population++.


	13. Part II, Chapter 6

**WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!**

**The Intergalactic Panel of Fanfic Ratings (IPFR) occasionally randomly selects stories to conduct reader satisfaction surveys on. This story was **

**randomly selected on Nixonary 16, 3006 for such a review. It was discovered that 51% of readers stopped reading this story after this particular chapter. Of this particular group, 25% entered keywords with phrases like "you must be crazy!" and "I can't believe I wasted my time on this dreck!"**

**Of the remaining 49% that continued to read, 75% continued to read to the end of Part II, entering keywords such as "plot twist" and "I knew something was up."**  
**The spread of these results triggered the IPFR to issue an automatic special warning at this point in the story, advising readers to proceed with extreme caution in terms of making assumptions about the plot or theme of the story. Any entities with extreme sensitivity to whiplash are advised not to proceed, and move on to much more straightforward and plentiful "Fry loves Leela, let's have a baby together" fiction available at this website.  
**

**END--END--END**

Leela was crouching behind her dresser, which she had flipped onto its side, and was using both hands to aim a nasty looking pistol at him. His heart sank as he saw she was still wearing the same yellow dress that he had remembered so fondly. He had felt many things around Leela, but he had only felt fear twice when looking at her. The first time had lasted 14 seconds, when he had seen her for the first time. The last time had lasted 14 days, as he watched her lie on a hospital bed.

And now-- he was surprised at himself. He actually wasn't scared. He was so far past scared that all he could do was watch and idly wonder whether she would shoot him on sight, as if he were a bystander with a little money riding on the outcome.

Her eye, narrowed in concentration, widened. And stayed wide. Her mouth fell open, and Fry took a certain grim satisfaction in knowing he had completely caught his idol off guard. It didn't happen very often.

"Wake up." She said. He didn't understand. He thought he should probably say something back. Something safe.

"Hi, Leela. I've been hiding in your closet. "

He heard her knuckles crack.

"That Gary, sounds like a nice guy, huh? Seems like an original character. Tragic and mysterious past and all."

She held up her wrist com, still holding the gun steadily on him with one arm.

"I was bluffing about the police, but not anymore. What the hell are you doing in my apartment?" Her eye widened. "My god. You pervert…"

"Wait," he said. "I only wanted this." And he pulled out the holophoner case, after taking out the small doll as well. Man was he glad he had remembered to pee. Especially since he was wearing boxers.

She looked at the two objects and hesitated.

"The holophoner? A holomem? You broke into here for those? Are you crazy?"

"Yes. I mean, No. I mean, yes to the holophoner, no to the crazy."

"And just asking me for them was too simple a thing to do."

The words came out of him in a rush. "Umm, well, the last time we talked, you almost choked me, and you wouldn't read my note and you said you would call the policepleasedontshootme..."

She opened her mouth, paused, then shut it, and stared at the quaking delivery boy, who had one eye squeezed shut. She seemed to be struggling with herself.

"Fair enough," she snorted. "Something finally broke inside me when I suddenly saw you. So if you have something to say, say it." And she swung her wrist thingie underneath her gun hand, ready to type.

"Um… well… I…. just … wanted… to …. Ask," Fry stalled.

"You're stalling. I should just –" her hand hovered over the wristcom, then dropped. "I don't get it. All this just for the holophoner? After everything else that's happened between us?" She put her face in both hands, turning the gun away from him for a moment. "Oh God, it's taken me a year to get over sleeping with you in this room, and I finally think I can get a nice, semi-important guy into here without having flashbacks, and now you just stroll out of the closet like the Boogey Bot. I'm never sleeping in here again. I'm going to have to move to avoid therapy."

Fry found something in this statement very intriguing.

"There's a BoogeyBot? It's real?"

She put her hands down and rolled her eye, a motion he found oddly comforting.

"Of course the Boogey bot is real." The gun snapped back toward him. "Why are you really here? Oh Lord, you would have HEARD me!" And her hand moved toward her wrist thingie again.

"Um, Leela why are you so mad—" And then Fry's mind caught up to the conversation, panting. "Um. Slept together? By sleep, you mean the other thing, right?"

"Don't remind me."

He dug through his memory. He was pretty sure he would have remembered this. He really would have wanted to remember this. But try as he might, he couldn't remember this. But he knew he had to be really careful. The next few words may be the most important words he ever said.

"Umm, did you ever once look and talk like Amy when we did it?"

Leela frowned and released the safety on the flash tube disintegrator primer. The end of the gun started to glow.

Better try again.

"Um, was I good?" He winced. "I mean, what was it like?"

_She opened her eye as the early morning sun peeked through the blinds. She rolled over and realized someone was in the bed with her. He was warm, and she started to snuggle against him. She opened her eye and saw the back of someone's head. It widened as she saw the two tufts of red hair sticking out of the top. And she felt a twitch of terror jolt her fully awake. Oh no. She didn't want this to happen. She shouldn't have gotten so smashed. It was going to be a disaster. _

_And what really scared her is she realized some part of her had wanted it to happen. Over the past two years, after her coma, after seeing her orange-haired alternative self, and after the opera, each time she had to acknowledge a little temptation, even curiosity. But she had known better, and had prided herself on her self-control that had preserved the best platonic relationship she had ever had._

_And now she was in bed with him, which was awkward enough, but the worst part was that from what she could remember, it had been very good. Even now she felt herself starting to fall for him, hard, and she just knew that the pain she would feel when it failed was going to be worse than anything she had ever experienced._

_He stopped snoring, rolled over, blinked his eyes, and smiled brightly, pleased with himself. Maybe it wouldn't end the way she knew it would probably end._

She was pausing, lost in thought. Not yelling. That had to be good, right?

"Um, Leela?"

She stirred. "Obviously, you didn't think so."

_She tried to convince herself that things were better than when they had been friends. But now they both felt uncomfortable around each other. She tried to probe, search out common interests, but he got frustrated so easily when she tried to talk with him on a more sophisticated or personal level. Despite her refusal to acknowledge it, she found herself getting bored. Worse for her self-esteem, she sensed he was getting bored._

"_Want to come over tonight?" she smiled, and blinked seductively at him as he scrubbed off the laser scars from the PE ship hull, left over from their latest customer complaint. "I've found an ancient earth movie called Memento, that's supposed to be really interesting. It starts at the middle and goes backwards."_

_Fry stopped and looked confused. "Why would someone make a story that starts in the middle?" He brightened. "Wanna to go to _O'Zorgnax's_ instead? Amy and Bender are heading there tonight."_

_"We've been going out there almost every night. I'm getting tired of it. Sorry? Want to go dancing instead?" _

_"Um, I'm not really liking it."_

_"So, now what? TV?"_

_He grunted and turned his back, starting to wash the hull again. _

_Love could blossom so quickly. So why did it crumble so slowly and painfully?_

"Huh? Whadda ya mean?"

"Stop fooling with me. Why would you be interested in the holophoner now? You weren't when you left. You were interested in something else."

"_It's like a dinner plate! I mean, kissing her is almost scary. I have to close my eyes just to keep me from staring at it while—you know!"_

_She stood in the corridor, her gift to him sitting in her hand, listening to the conversation in the locker room. He rarely played the holophoner now, he never did much of anything except watch TV, but she had thought that the gift might respark his interest, and their relationship, if she reminded him enough about it. So she had bought the sequel book to "My First Holophoner", called "Holophoner for Demanding Parents," and had been walking around looking for him, so she could force him to make something of himself. There were also other important things to talk about, and the first serious talk had not gone well._

"_Not important. Anyway I started thinking about how I've wasted all these years waiting for her, how I've given up so much…"_

_She could only listen. He was leaving? He was running away?_

"_Well, I guess this is goodbye."_

_And he was kissing Amy. And he was going to leave her stranded. Life was hard and unfair. She knew that. But she had thought maybe he would be different than everyone else. After all he had done for her he might have been different. And a single tear fell onto the book cover, staining it…_

She stood there, staring off into space, but with the gun trained on Fry as steadily as if she were a statue. Fry didn't dare breathe. The little doll shook in his hand.

The motion of the doll caught her attention, and she came back to the present.

"I don't believe you want the holophoner. You just grabbed it when you were in there. Put it down on the floor."

"Why do you have it?"

"Let's see, who has the gun? Oh yeah, I do. I guess I get to ask the questions. Why the holomem? Finally feeling guilty at last?"

"What are you talking about? All I have is this dollie thing. From your orphanarium place."

She lowered the gun slightly and looked at him.

"That's right, I forgot you're from the Stupid Ages. So why did you grab it? Are you trying to fool me into thinking you really wanted these things, that you felt some regret, when all you really wanted to do was sneak in and—"

The gun was shaking slightly.

"Uhhhh, feel sorry for what?"

She snapped her gun down, huffed, and held out her hand.

"You're right. I'm giving you too much credit in all this. I want you to see this anyway. Gimme."

Very carefully, feeling like he was being tricked, he inched toward her. She seized the doll from his hand, and he backed away quickly. She did something to the doll's head.

One side of the room vanished. He saw a second Leela lying in a bed, propped up with pillows so that she sat somewhat upright.

Fry stumbled backwards, startled at the sudden appearance of the vivid image, and bumped into the closest door. He glanced over to the original Leela, still in her yellow dress. He was watching him, not the image, as if she were waiting for him to say something.

"Hi Mom, hi Dad," The projected Leela said. She looked tired, more tired than he had ever seen her before. Even as she smiled into the room, her face looked drawn and her arms quivered with exhaustion. "I made it, but I can only hold her for a little bit before we put her back in the isolation chamber."

Her?

And then something squirmed in her lap.

The little infant yawned, and blinked with one eye. No, there was a second eye, but because the first was centered on the face, the other was squished between her ear and forehead. She moved one arm, but the other arm was only a flipper. Breathing was a struggle for her, and the quality of the recording was such that he could hear every rasping breath.

The Leela in the yellow dress was not watching the hologram, but Fry, who flicked a glance at her.

"You adopted an orphan?" He looked around. He was pretty sure he hadn't seen a baby around here. Of course, he hadn't checked the freezer. But that was probably too cold for a baby.

"No. She's my daughter." She paused for a moment. "Our daughter."

Something started shrieking deep inside Fry's mind. The world began to tilt sideways, and a rushing sound filled his ears, as if he were next to a waterfall. Frantically he looked around.

"U-Us? Wh—wh—where?"

Through the roar in his ears he could barely make out the words.

"She's dead. You killed her."

Suddenly the roaring stopped. All sound stopped. The floor was rising up to meet his face. Yet in the silence, he thought he heard Leela say one word, very quietly:

"Murderer."

Everything turned white, then black.


	14. Part II, Chapter 7

Fry opened his eyes and found himself staring at the ceiling. He struggled to remember where he was, until a flash of purple appeared out the corner of his eye. He turned his head and saw Leela sitting in a chair, looking at him.

He smiled automatically a moment before he realized where he was.

"Leela?"

"So you remember who I am," she said matter-of-factly. She leaned toward him. "Do you know who you are?"

He stared blankly at her. "I'm me, I think."

She took a deep breath.

"What's your name?"

"Fry. Phillip Fry."

"And your grandfather's name?"

"Um, mother's side or father's side?"

She sighed, looking tired.

"Don't play with me. Roswell."

"Um, Fry. Phillip Fry."

"Well, it's you all right. And you still remember some things. It may not be too late." She leaned back in the chair and jerked her thumb to the side. "Do you remember your partner in crime here?"

Fry looked around. He was in Leela's living room, lying on the sofa, and Bender was standing in a corner.

"Bender! Aren't you waiting outside for me?"

"Ix-nay on the ait-way, Fry. I was simply hanging around in a dark alley, mindin' my own business, when eyeball here leans out the window and axes me to come up here to help out."

"Why didn't you tell-"

"And I must say I am shocked, shocked that you are breaking into my good friend Leela's apartment. Though I must admit, it was pretty clever trying to go in through the window-"

"You're saturating your sincerity simulator, Bender," Leela said dryly. "Better get it adjusted." She turned back to Fry. "What is the last thing you remember?"

"Um. I broke into your apartment. Looking for the holophoner. Hid in your closet. And then you found me and told me, told me—" The memory of what she had said rushed back full force and he sprang from the couch and actually walked forward a few steps before he felt dizzy again and fell to the ground. His face lying sideways on the floor, he spotted the holophoner box and Leela's gun lying a few feet away.

"Careful there," Leela said, gently lifting him up. Why was she suddenly being so nice to him? It felt great, but somehow he couldn't relax. Shouldn't she be kicking his ass right about now?

"Yeah, I'd also add that you threw up on my carpet ," she continued, as she set him back down on the couch. "Or more of a dry heave. When was the last time you've eaten?"

When had he eaten? Not at the dumpster. Or at the Cygnoids pizzeria, or even at the pub—he had been broke. In fact, he hadn't eaten since his whole nightmare started. No wonder he had been feeling dizzy.

"Never mind," she added, as she saw Fry trying to concentrate. "We'll get you something. So I meant to ask, what was the last memory you have before you can't remember what happened to you, over this past year?"

"How'd you know about that? I never was able to tell you."

"I've been talking to Bender." She looked a little sheepish. "I guess I never gave you a chance to mention it yesterday. But after you threw up and fainted on my floor I began to suspect something strange might be going on. And so I found Bender minding his own business outside, and we've had a nice discussion. So what do you last remember?"

"We went dancing for the first time. We danced in the street." An unpleasant fact emerged in his memory. "You met Gary for the first time."

Her cheeks colored slightly, but she said nothing.

"Well, they did a thorough job, didn't they? Adam gets to stroll back into Paradise, innocent once more?"

"Who's Adam? Is that Gary?"

"Are you having strange dreams?"

Fry's heart fluttered slightly. How did she know? He nodded uncertainly.

"Do you feel that something or someone is after you, but you're not sure who or why?"

Fry's eyes widened and he scrambled upright on the sofa.

"How-How? Can you read my mind?"

"Easy there, Fry. Bender and I think you may have had a mind wipe. It's illegal in DOOP territory, but available within this galaxy."

"Mind wipe"?

"You've had certain memories removed. Actually an entire block of time removed from your memory."

"They can do that?"

"Yes, the ability to remove memories is centuries old. But it's still a dangerous procedure. There are lots of side effects, including paranoia and collateral memory loss."

"Who did this?"

"I think you did."

Fry lay silent for a few moments, trying to absorb this last revelation.

"Why?"

Silence.

"Bender, Fry really should have something to eat. Would you do me a favor and run down to the 7/11 and get a few cans of Bachelor Chow? Actually, get the self-heating one."

"But you've got a lot of mold and wine in the kitchen. Enough for two humans."

"It's feta cheese, Bender, and he needs something less rich." She sighed. "And yes I'll pay you."

"Glad to be of help-"

"Step away from the purse." She walked over, fished out a few bills to Bender, and said, "And I'm moving the purse to a new hiding spot, so don't bother."

Bender hesitated at the doorway, swiveling his head to look at Fry on the couch.

"He'll be fine. We won't anything until you're back, as we discussed." And then Bender was gone.

Fry looked at her back as she watched Bender leave. She wasn't turning around.

"Leela? What's going on?"

"Fry, you had your memories removed because you wanted to forget some things. Are you sure you want to hear this?"

"Tell me everything," he said firmly.

God, she hated to remember all this, to drag herself back into the past and reopen old wounds. But the expression of mingled confusion and fright on the red-haired delivery boy's face was so similar to the expression he had the day he left Planet Express for good, that it was almost as if she were there again--

"_But I didn't want this. I didn't want this to happen."_

_They stood outside Planet Express, leaning against the low wall where she had once confessed to him about her terrible loneliness at not knowing her parents. At the time, she had been caught off guard by how much his simple-minded words had comforted her._

_Now he stood in the same spot, but with a backpack on his shoulder, about to leave for good, but now instead of comforting her, every word of his stabbed._

"_I didn't really want this either. But it's going to happen, and it's going to be hard, and we need to decide together what to do about it."_

"_How'd it happen?"_

"_Well, when a man and a woman sleep together, sometimes-"_

"_Yeah, but I'm human and you're-you're not."_

_Her heart skipped a beat. He had never cared about this before._

"_Well we're close enough apparently. But, there's going to be—issues. The fetus is very small. Too small. And she's not going to be --normal."_

"_What do you mean, normal?"_

"_She may be missing a hand, maybe even an entire arm. And her lungs are going to be incomplete."_

"_She's a mutant?"_

_Her vision blurred for a moment as she nodded. He didn't have to say it that way. What made it hard is that they'd already had this conversation three times, and it always seem to end exactly the same way. She twisted the holophoner book with her hands._

"_I really need to know if you're with me on this. You can't dodge it any longer. I didn't want it, but I'm going to go through with it. I know that things aren't working out between you and me and that you think I'm kind of boring—"_

_Her temper rose, but she tamped it down. Not now. There was someone innocent who needed her._

"_I never told you that. Can you read my mind?" His eyes widened in surprise. She used to think that was cute._

"_I heard you talking to Amy. Among other things."_

"_Oh", he said. Then his eyes nearly popped out. "Oh."_

"_Yeah, not a great thing to do to me. And normally you'd be running for your life right now. But I've got to do what's best for her. She's going to need tissue samples. From me. And from you."_

_He stood there, staring, mouth open, looking like a fool._

Fry lay back on the sofa as Leela spoke. Initially hesitant, she soon settled into a steady rhythm as she spoke of initial passion, creeping disillusionment, feeble fights, test kits in the bathroom.

Finally freed to speak, the words seemed to soothe and relieve her, all the while as they burned and scorched him. He could only listen, and bathe in the flames. From first kiss to final breakup, it had taken only two months. Two months. After three years of winning her over. That hurt. The other Fry and Leela from the Fighting Mongoose Universe had gotten married. What had happened here?

_Turunga Leela was a proud woman. From birth she had been surrounded by others who had told her she was worthless. The others at the orphanage would tell her to her face. Others, like the prospective parents who would glance at her before walking on, or the guidance counselors who pushed her into dead-end careers, were more subtle. She had had to like herself, because no one else would do it for her. And she was proud of herself, because she had pulled herself up with no one's help._

_That wasn't quite true. Before her was one person she had leaned on for help, in so many ways. He got her the job she loved, pulled her out of a coma, had helped find her parents, had written an opera for her. She tried to remember that as she threw her pride away and begged this frightened and nervous man to stay. But the more desperate she became, the more he seemed to shrink away. She could almost see the respect, the admiration he once had for her, die in his eyes._

"_The doctor says that she will need frequent blood transfusions, and genetic adjustments that require lung tissue that only the parents can provide. Both parents need to provide. On an ongoing basis. Or she's going to die."_

"_Lungs? I gotta give her part of my lungs? Forever and ever?"_

_Even now, she couldn't stop rolling her eye._

"_Not the whole lung, just a piece of it. And yes, for at least three years."_

"_I can't."_

"_Please. I know you have it in you."_

"_I didn't want this to happen."_

"_Well neither did I."_

"_I can't do this, be stuck to this, like forever. It's not fair."_

"_Of course it's not fair. Life isn't fair. It isn't always walking on sunshine, you know."_

"_I'm really sorry, but I've got to go." _

"_She's going to die if you go. Do you understand that?"_

_He put his chin down on his chest for a moment._

"_O.K."_

_And then he was gone._

_It was a day she wanted to forget. But couldn't._

Fry didn't dare say anything. Leela's hands trembled on her lap, and her eye bored into his, unblinking, an eye of judgment. He could only stare back, mind spinning in panic. Did this really happen?

"Leela… Bender and Zoidberg, nobody, told me about this."

"No one except my parents knew. I was …uncertain… about our relationship, so I made you promise not to tell Bender we were together, and the rest of Planet Express didn't know, although Amy figured out we were dating shortly before you left."

A secret relationship. Figured she would do that.

"I took leave just the day before you left, when I was a month pregnant. She was born only three months after that in the mutant hospital, premature, brain damaged, beautiful. Apparently mutants develop quickly, otherwise she wouldn't have survived at all."

"What was her name?"

_She really didn't know if she had actually ever loved him. She did know that for a long time the world looked like a thin layer of dirt had covered it, as if she were staring through a dirty windshield. Food tasted bland, music was just a sequence of sounds, and her pregnancy was a curse, not a miracle. She wasn't sure that she hated him. You couldn't hate somebody for being what they were. Could you?_

"Eureka. Turanga Eureka."

"And then what happened?"

"_I regret to inform you, Ms. Turunga, that your daughter's condition is caused by a genetic anomaly—caused by genetic incompatibility between you and the father. The prognosis is terminal, unless we can somehow find the father and take a lung sample. Would you know where the father is?"_

"_He left months. I don't know where he is. He never tried to contact me."_

Leela was silent.

…_she sat up at 3 AM, listening to her daughter fight for breath, hacking and wheezing pitifully, as she fought a losing battle. The injections from the home I.V. kit were not working. It was hard, so very hard, for someone used to action, to have to sit there and know you could do nothing…_

…_the wooden box was lowered into the ground, where the mutants buried their dead. She would go to hell before she cremated her body. She deserved to lie here in the sewers with all the Turangas._

_The coffin was so small. It wasn't fair._

_Coward. Murderer._

Leela had finished speaking. The room seemed unnaturally quiet.

"So I killed her? When did I come back to do that?"

"The law doesn't see it my way, but I think that a person can be a murderer, even if they don't physically kill someone. Deliberate inaction can kill just as effectively as any action. Do you understand what I mean?" And she looked at him. In fact, she was focused very intently on him now. He squirmed under the intensity of her eye's gaze.

"Um, you meant like if a friend of mine wanted money to buy a new Xbox, and I said no I wouldn't give it to him, and he goes out to ask another friend and crosses the street, but slips on a banana peel and falls down into the sewer, breaks his neck and dies? No wait-wait," he waved her off before she could speak—"no, it wouldn't be my fault 'cause I didn't put the banana there, and wouldn't. I hate bananas." He thought again.

"It's more like I'm in this desert and this other person is in the desert and they need water and I have some, but I need it to, so I drink it and they die." He looked again at Leela, whose face was studiously neutral.

"That still doesn't seem right. No, it's like I was sitting in a hot tub in the desert and someone crawls up to get a drink of water, and I don't give them a drink of water, even though I have plenty of it." He frowned. "And since I have one heart but two lungs, I guess I don't really need that other lung, so if someone else really needed it and I said no, and no one else could give it, then yeah, I guess it would be like killing them." He was somewhat pleased with himself that he had worked it all out, and then realized what he had just said.

"Oh geez, I did kill her, didn't I?" And he stole a glance at Leela. He was expecting anger, but instead the neutral expression on her face had transitioned into sadness.

"Part of me was hoping that you wouldn't understand," she said softly.

"That you left just because you didn't fully understand the implications. But you've just shown you understand right now, so you must have back then too, because I told you exactly the same statements back then."

So she's disappointed in me because I was too smart, Fry thought. My world really is upside down now.

"So this is why you hate me so bad. I left a little girl to die?" His eyes were wet, and he couldn't bring himself to look directly at her any longer. He also couldn't quite say the word "daughter".

"Do I hate you? That is a hard, hard question. When you showed up yesterday and swaggered up to me without a care in the world, acting like nothing had happened, I finally hated you," she admitted. "I've tried not to hate you for a long time, that you were simply being who you were, and it was my fault for putting you in such a situation in the first place. But no, over the past two days I found I really wanted to hurt you and wipe that grin off your face."

She stared at him, thoughtfully. He didn't dare move, didn't dare look away from her.

She leaned forward.

"As of yesterday, I finally decided that you had murdered our daughter, as completely as if you had smothered her with a pillow. When you walked away, you knew what you were doing. You don't always get a lot of things, but I thought you understood that. And you've proved it, just now, without me prompting you."

The world was starting to spin around Fry again. Had he really left someone to die and wiped his mind to forget it?

And then, to his astonishment, she sniffed, and wiped a hand on the side of her face. The gun was still safely on the floor.

"But do I hate you now? That's a hard question. A really hard question. I find out you did this to yourself, and I just can't hate you as much as I did. Even if wiping your memory of her is like killing her all over again. For at least it tells me that you felt regret about what you did."

"You don't hate me?" He kinda hated him, right now.

"I can't figure it out," she said. "It's like you've stepped into a time machine. It's almost like you're innocent again. But somehow you can't be. If the same situation occurred, you'd do the same thing all over again."

And then it was as if something had deflated in her, and she looked very, very tired.

"Oh, Fry," she said. "I guess I can't really bring myself to hate you anymore. Angry, yes. But I also feel a little pity for you. If anything, I also hate myself a bit about this." She looked at the floor.

"Huh?"

"You were the best friend I ever had. You were always there for me. You meant so much to me, almost as much as my parents."

Two days ago Fry would have gnawed off his right elbow to hear these words. But now he found himself wishing that she would shoot him, because that would be quicker than what was now happening. Because somehow he knew that now she was saying goodbye. For good.

"Not only did I lose a daughter, but I lost both my best friend and my self-confidence in my judgement. I knew what would happen sleeping with you, but did it anyway. I thought I had better judgment than that. And I—we—ended up destroying something very special."

A strand of purple hair had come loose from her normally immaculate ponytail and drifted by her eye. Absently she swiped it away. Fry's heart ached. This was too much like the woman he remembered. Why couldn't she yell at him instead?

He looked up at the white ceiling. Had this really happened? Had he really run away from a failing love life, a dying child, and wiped out the memory? He was not one for self-reflection. Generally in life he had been content to drift on the currents of existence and let the eddies take him wherever they went. And he had ended up in some interesting places, hadn't he? He never had thought much about the future, even when he had finally found himself in it. What would he have done if he had finally slept with Leela? What if this had actually happened? What would he have done?

"I just knew you're just weren't capable of a serious relationship, and that neither of us would be happy in a long-term relationship with each other. That's what I thought. That's what I knew. But after my coma dreams, after seeing our lives in the alternate universe, after the opera—I started to wonder-"

He had never lasted in any relationship for long, for he was happy to escape any commitment. Uriel, Morgan, the radiator woman--all had marched through his life and exited without leaving a mark, and he had never given them a second thought. What would he do if he had been faced with a decision like this? He didn't like where his thoughts were heading.

"And even as it was happening, as our relationship sank and even as you were leaving, I couldn't quite believe you would do it."

"Are you sure it was me?"

A slight trace of annoyance crept into her voice.

"I was born in the 30th century, remember? Yes of course, toward the end, as I was grasping for some hope, any hope in this relationship, I asked the Professor to test some hair and skin flakes from you, that I had snatched when trying to cut your hair. I almost hoped that you were some clone or shapeshifting alien. I even had the professor check that the lids to the alternate universes were locked up. But no, I ran out of excuses for you."

She straightened up.

"Anyway, I guess in retrospect I'm not surprised you would wipe your memory of the whole experience. It's the easy way out. You usually take the easy way out of things. Well, I don't have that choice, and I wouldn't take it if I could. Removing your memories is like destroying a bit of who you are."

She stood up, eyes dry. She always could mask her inner thoughts quickly.

"So now what?" he said.

"First things first. You need medical attention."

"What?"

"Bender and I looked online while you were out. You may be having a reaction to the memory treatment. It's why you awoke in a dumpster with no idea how you got here. You may be in danger of losing more memories, and your side effects, your paranoia and dream states, are only going to get worse. We need to get you to a hospital."

She had always comforted him, and he looked at her with longing as he asked, "and then what?"

She couldn't seem to meet his eyes.

"I'm sorry, but even if you get well, and can't remember what you did, we can't go back to the way things were. A lack of memory does not mean a lack of responsibility. I still can't be around you. I remember too much when I look at you. I now know what you are, fundamentally. And I have to move on. One of us is going to have to leave. And in fairness, you have nowhere else to go. I wasn't lying about other job offers. Maybe it's time I move up from a company that doesn't pay me anything anyway."

"No, no, I'll go." he said. His conscience was boiling. Did he sacrifice a family for his freedom? He was scared to look any deeper into himself, for he was scared he might find the truth. "I'll be OK. You're really happy there as a pilot. You should go on with your life." He nearly choked on the words. "Even with Gary."

And for the first time, she smiled, a little shyly, and suddenly he felt like a burden had been lifted from his shoulders. He wasn't responsible any longer. Someone else would figure things out.

"I'm sorry it worked out like this," she said, "but it's the way it has to be."

"_No Fry, don't, it has to be."_

_She dragged the mutating mess up the stairway, away from the rest of them.._

"Fry? Why are you looking at the ceiling?"

"I'm not sure. Leela, do you feel that something strange is going on?"

"You mean, other than you wiping your brain, making things very awkward between us, breaking into my apartment, and throwing up on my rug? No, not really."

He stood up, crouched by the holophoner box, and opened it.

"What are you doing?"

"Why do you have this?"

She bit her lip for a few moments thinking.

"I wanted to remember the good times. There are so many good memories I have at Planet Express. I was surprised how quickly things turned so awful."

He didn't feel right, as if he had spun himself around in a chair too many times and was permanently dizzy. He was drowning in uncertainty, and his only lifeline was the belief that the holophoner would help him. He started assembling the pieces.

"Fry, what's going on?"

"I think something bad has been here. I think it's gonna come back."

"Fry?"

In went the mouthpiece, here snapped the bulb. It was calming, but he still found himself listening intently to the walls.

Leela clamped her hand down on the holophoner.

"Fry, you're not yourself. You're going through a paranoid delusion. You need help. Medical help. You're going to wait here until they arrive."

"No, I need to go. We need to go, Leela. Right away."

And as he snapped the last piece of the holophoner into place, he felt the gun press against his temple.

"I'm sorry Fry. Believe or not, I'm tired and don't want to fight. But you're going to the hospital, whether you want to or not."


	15. Part II, Chapter 8

Fry tried to pull the holophoner off the floor, but he couldn't budge it from her hand. In frustration he grabbed her other wrist, the one holding the pistol, and tried to wrench it away, but he may as well have been trying to bend girders.

Still holding the gun and the holophoner, Leela stood up from her crouch, effortlessly lifting the delivery boy off the ground and setting him on his feet. Her left hand and his right hand both had a death grip on the holophoner, and his left hand grasped her right wrist, which still held the gun pointed at his head. He started kicking her shin. The only thing that happened was that his toe started to hurt.

"I'm getting tired of this," she said, a slight edge in her voice. "The website said to try to use persuasion, and not force, when getting you help, but you're starting to push it. Now in case you haven't noticed, I have a gun to your head. That should be telling you to do something."

She spread her arms apart, so she could get her face closer to his and look into his eyes. "Fry, look at me," she said. "Look at me. This is for your own good. You're in danger of forgetting everything. Everything. Do you understand what that means? You may as well be dead."

The world wasn't solid anymore. Reality seemed to have skidded sideways on him. He was not longer certain of who he was, where he was, or what he should be doing. He was completely lost.

And then he caught a faint scent of her perfume. It was the same scent he had caught the night they had first went dancing. And a sudden impulse came to him, and before his mind could deliberate, take a coffee break, and veto the resolution, he leaned forward and kissed her.

They had kissed a few times before, but most of them had been brief and fleeting. There had been no time to experience the moment. The one time he had kissed her for an extended time, worms were buzzing in his brain and he had been too caught up in the moment to truly experience the sensations.

But now time froze, and he was hyperaware of every sensation, every touch. She had been standing so close to him that when he leaned in to kiss her he could feel the entire length of her lithe, muscular form pressing against him.

And then a strange thing happened. For just a moment, Leela relaxed, and the hard outlines of her form melted into soft curves that molded against his body.

Hard yet soft.

And then something in his head exploded. He felt like a man who had spent all his life walking in a valley filled with fog, but who had now climbed a hill and had suddenly broken into the morning sunshine, and could see all the way to the sea on the horizon. The feeling had happened only twice before in his life. Once, when he had heard the words, "I love what you've become." And the other time, when he had heard the words, "You must choose." He couldn't quite place that last one, however.

Hard yet soft. That summed her up, didn't it? She was full of contrasts and contradictions. Strong yet vulnerable, peaceful yet violent, sensitive yet sarcastic, not quite human but more human than anyone he had ever known. He treasured every aspect of this complex and contradictory woman, the fearless space captain, the scared little girl, the emotionally scared orphan. She was his guide and his protector, his greatest friend. And the least boring person he had ever met.

The world was full of things that changed. The speed of light. The quality of Everyone Loves Hypnotoad. But some things didn't change. He was Phillip J. Fry. And he loved Turanga Leela. And he always would. He'd die for her without a second thought. And if reality didn't agree with that, then reality was simply wrong.

It was as if they were dancing again, yet completely still. And as he became aware of their heartbeats matching together in sync, and as he lost himself in her, he realized that he had found himself again.

The sea sparkled in the distance. It was very beautiful.

I didn't do it. He thought. I didn't do any of this. And she's kissing me back. Deep down, she knows I didn't do it, either.

Standing on his hill, watching the clouds dance in the sky, he realized he was having what Leela had once told him was an epifanny. Strange word, because his fanny wasn't involved at all. Man, he hoped he didn't get many more of them. His head hurt like hell.

The kiss couldn't have lasted more than a moment, but then she started to move and he snapped his eye open, a flicker before hers opened as well. He had never noticed how large her eye was at close range. It was as large as a dinner plate. And he loved it.

She gave him a hard shove away, but he managed to remain standing, gripping both the gun and the holophoner.

"You kissed me back."

He looked at her face, which was flushed scarlet with embarrassment. And rage. So she had felt it too.

"Geez, I don't get it." He said slowly. "I cheat on you, kill our daughter, and you kiss me like that? You wouldn't do that. Or at least you shouldn't. It'd be kinda creepy. And not the good kind of creepy, either. No, something's not right."

Her face was full of loathing, toward him or herself he had no idea. But through her wrists he could feel the storm building.

"I wouldn't do that. Any of that. OK, maybe the sleeping with you part. I'd probably do that. Many times."

The gun swung directly in front of his face.

Kissing her probably wasn't the smartest move, because she was going to shoot him now, he idly thought. He was finally going to die in this room. And frankly, he didn't care. It had been a good kiss. He now knew that she had deep feelings for him. He had never been sure. So he took a moment to be happy. He only wished he had more time to bask in his joy before he died.

And yet—maybe part of him was wiser than he knew. Leela hated guns. Not because of the violence, but because of the lack of violence. The lack of contact. The impersonal delivery of death. She was a martial arts expert with a lot of anger to release. She wouldn't shoot, she would—

She released the holophoner and slapped Fry across the face so hard that he thought his neck would break. His vision cleared just in time to see her fist filling up his field of view.

The punch was straight and true, and he staggered backwards across the room and crashed against the doorway leading into the bedroom. He glanced down. The holophoner was in his hand. One side of his face was already swelling. He was going to have a black eye. But despite the pain, the world was solid once again.

Both hands on the gun, she advanced toward him, frowning. She had forgotten how quickly he could recover from a blow to the head.

"I'll leave it at that, because you're not yourself," she said evenly. "Also, you really need a bath. Now drop the holophoner and sit down."

"I'm still me. But are you still you? Something's not right, Leela, and you know it." In his mind he was walking down the hill, but he wasn't back in the fog yet. He glanced down at the holophoner.

"Why do you want me to drop this? Why do you care?"

"Sit down Fry. Or I'll shoot you in the leg. I'm serious."

"It's important. Somehow we both know it's important. Why?"

As he walked down the hill, he looked over his shoulder. Between a gap in the surrounding hills, he caught a flash of blue.

"Leela, where is the other holophoner?"

"What other holophoner?"

The last night I remember—I had a holophoner I was going to give you as a gift. It was in my pocket. I didn't tell anyone about it. Where is it?"

"I haven't a clue what you're talking about."

The mist rolled over his head. Thank god. Another epifanny would have killed him. He really needed an aspirin. Or a Slurm.

But even in the mist, somehow he still knew where he was. He looked down at his hands and they were shaking. But for the first time in his life, they weren't shaking from fear.

"Something's wrong here. Very wrong. We've got to find out what's goin' on here Leela. We have to fix it."

"Denial is the first stage of the recovery process," she said. "But wallowing in it is the way of the coward. You can't unkill her, Fry."

He started to move toward the bedroom door, a few feet away.

She fired the gun. A wave of heat seared past his right cheek, and he felt the paint blister and peel next to his ear.

"I said don't move."

"You got her name wrong," he said quietly.

"What name?" she replied, brow furrowed.

"It would have been Turanga Yancy Eureka," he said simply, and turned and ducked into the bedroom.

He rushed toward the bedroom window, expecting to feel his flesh baking between his shoulder blades at any moment. His head was still ringing, the floor kept threatening to rush up to his face, and he nearly slipped in the puddle of his own vomit, but somehow he found himself staring over the window ledge to the ground below. His eyes were not used to the darkness. As he jumped through the window he felt something grab at his ankle, but he slipped through. However, the grab had added a spin to his fall, so he cartwheeled through the air. It occurred to him, too late, that he shouldn't have forgotten that the apartment was one full story above the ground.

Two metal arms seized him and he felt himself being lowered gently to the ground.

"Figured it was only a matter of time before she threw you out," Bender said. He took his cigar out of his mouth and stubbed it out on Fry's jacket. "So what'd you steal for me?"

Suffering vertigo, Fry looked up to see Leela's head outlined in silhouette above.

"Fine. Get the hell out of my life," she said. "I'm trying to help you, even after all you did. Your memory loss is going to get worse, until you're just a drooling lunatic. I wouldn't wish that on anybody, but you're going to do it to yourself."

Before she had even finished speaking, Fry was running as fast as he could out of the alley, holophoner in hand.

"Bender! Stay with him! Don't let him hurt himself."

"Aye, aye captain," muttered the robot as his stubbed his cigarette out.

_Get out of my life._

The words were still ringing in Fry's ears as he ran out of the alley into a street, right into the path of an approaching ambulance. Fry froze in the headlights, heard a screeching sound, and felt himself being grabbed from behind and pulled back.

"Now you owe me an extra dollar a week," Bender muttered.

"Hey, careful there, buddy," a thin Neptunian said as he jumped out of the driver's seat. "Suicide booth's just around the corner. A lot less messier way to go." The door to the ambulance slid open, and Fry could see a couple of beings start to pull out a large, odd-looking piece of equipment. Everyone except the driver had their backs to him.

"Say, is this the Fairview apartments?"

Fry nodded, and dashed in front of the ambulance's headlights and across the street. He heard Bender following close behind, and the faint words of the driver saying, "Apartment 1I, guys, hurry up."

The pair returned into the alleyway that they had waited in earlier that evening. Fry, sucking wind, leaned his back against the wall, watching the medics enter Leela's apartment building. Just then, Amy's Beta Romero pulled up in front as well.

Must've called her to bring Nibbler home, since I ruined her big night, he thought. Then he realized he was running again.

Three blocks down the alley, Bender finally caught up with him.

"Damnit Fry, what the hell is going on?"

Fry finally stopped, looked all directions, and listened. Other than some faint traffic and the soothing sounds of a water leak somewhere in the darkness, all was quiet.

He looked down at his holophoner, still miraculously intact.

"Let's find out," he said.


	16. Part II, Chapter 9

In the middle of a random alley in New New York, Fry held up his beloved instrument in triumph. So many of his hopes were now invested in this instrument, he was almost afraid to hold it. What if all his hunches and instincts about this object were just illusions?

Bender stood and watched Fry pose with the holophoner.

"So, uh, you gonna stand there like that all night?" he said, stubbing out his cigar on the alley wall.

"Um, no, I'm just trying to figure out what to do next." He looked askance at Bender. "And just how many of those things are you gonna smoke tonight, anyway?"

"Just congratulating myself for a job well done. When I went up to BigBoot's apartment, I managed to filch some of her hidden cash. So the night isn't a complete loss."

"She had money hidden? Where?"

"The freezer. Anyway, I got what I wanted, and you got what you wanted, although that doesn't really matter—"

"Bender—"

Fry's heart was still thumping from the adrenaline of the past few minutes.

"Bender—when you were up there with Leela—do you really think I had a mind wipe thing?"

"Who cares? You gotta erase old files from memory from time to time, or else you have to install bigger hard drives. And those things are noisy. Makes it harder to sneak up on someone."

"This wasn't some junk file. She said I forgot we had been going out and, and—we'd had a kid." Even coming from his own mouth, the statement still amazed him. He gingerly shook the holophoner, as if hoping something would drop out.

"Well—great job, meatbag! You've been seeking to interface with her for a long time, and now you've manufactured a new unit! Kinda surprising I didn't know about it. You never told me, and I never read this in her diary, but I guess it's a few years outtaa date—"

"And then she said I got bored and ran away and left the baby to die because it needed tissue stuff from me." Nothing fell out of the holophoner.

Bender paused for a moment.

"Well—great job, meatbag! You've managed to really dodge a trap there. You were this close to losing your freedom, and you seized the Robot Devil by the horns and broke away from a suffocating situation—"

"But I know I didn't do it. Any of it. I couldn't have. I wouldn't have."

"Well—great job, ah, crap. I'm trying to pretend to care about this, hoping you'll get your sorry ass to move out of here, but you're making it too hard. Either you did it or you didn't, and you're fine with it, or not fine with it. I don't go in for this whiny fuzzy logic stuff in the middle." And he lit another cigar.

"So now after getting your ass kicked, are you happy?" He looked at his dirty, bruised and bleeding friend. "Now what?"

In all honesty Fry wasn't sure. He hadn't thought past this moment. "Umm… now this thing should tell me something. Something important."

He fell silent, and the sound of dripping water was deafening.

"The only insight I'm getting is that we should get out of here."

"Speak, holophoner," Fry said. "Uh, open holophoner?" He started to shake it. "Please?"

"Here," Bender said, and he grabbed the flute-like device and scanned it. "Nope," he said, returning it, "no secret hiding places or messages in there. No why doncha come on back to the apartment. You haven't been back there since this whole thing has started. And if you get mugged here I'm gonna lose my friendship fee from ya."

But Fry was frowning, looking at the object in his hands.

"What's going on? Why isn't it working?"

"Maybe it's mad at you for playing it so badly."

"Not funny, Bender," muttered Fry, but the word 'play' triggered a thought. He gently blew into the reed.

A quiet but very clean note emerged, along with a small ring of mist. Fry stopped playing and watch the ring gradually dissipate.

"That actually didn't sound too bad," he said, impressed. And then he began to play in earnest. He had no idea what to play, so he just kept his mind blank, a natural state of mind for him, and as his fingers randomly danced over the controls an odd sequence of notes emerged, and the mist began to pour out of the end, spin, and thicken.

And then, suddenly, like a shot out of starter pistol, a vivid image erupted from the end of the instrument—

_He looked around the group and asked, how do I find her again? Is she left anywhere?_

_Joy fades, hummed Munda,_

_but pain endures, finished Morris._

_I don't get it. Why doesn't someone speak sense?_

_Far away, he heard a faint rustling._

_Leela was gone. Pain endures. The thought made him feel sad and he lifted the holophoner to his lips and began to play. A mournful, melancholy tune emerged, along with some mist, and before his eyes the mist resolved into an image of a room. A hospital room._

"_Pain endures," Morris repeated, and nodded to the image. And before he had a chance to tell himself how silly it was, he stepped up to the image and walked through-_

_-and fell onto the floor of the hospital room. Scrambling up, he looked behind him and saw an image of the basement fading away as the smoke dissipated. Then he faced forward._

_She lay in the bed, hooked up to a bank of medical instruments. A Swedish novelty toy sat on a table next to her. The walls were a rather depressing green color. _

_He was starting to understand. His most painful memory of her. He wanted to rush over and convince himself she really was still there, and not lost, but there was something about the room that made him hesitate. Maybe it was the lack of color near the floor underneath the bed. In fact, the color seemed to be fading all along the edge of the bed, rather like a shirt that was fading after too many washes. He backed away to a corner of the room and paused, trying to sense everything. Other than the steady beep of the heart monitor, everything was still. He crouched and placed the holophoner to his lips, and for reasons he was uncertain of, he quietly played a few notes. _

_Something shifted under the bed. And In the darkness underneath an enormous eye opened and looked at him._

_He was already halfway across the room, heading toward the entry door. As his hand grasped the doorknob he heard something big and moist slide out from underneath the bed behind him. He knew it was important not to look. The door was locked._

_Frantically he jerked the knob and nothing moved. As he was panicking he sensed his hands lifting the holophoner to his mouth._

_A powerful note escaped from the instrument and the door blew open, tumbling down the hall. He rushed through just as he heard something slither and smack against the doorway._

_The hospital corridor seemed empty of life. All the doors along the hallway were closed. Weak florescent lights hummed, but were not powerful enough to keep the far end of the hall from fading into the gloom._

_He could go three directions from here. He glanced to his right and suddenly saw another large eye open in the far darkness. He heard rustling in the walls to his left. He ran straight ahead._

_He ran randomly down the corridors, instinctively trying to figure out how to get outside. Behind him he heard the floor crack and the walls creak as something very large shoved desks and tables out of the way in its haste to reach him. It was closing in._

_Ahead at a junction he saw several large windows installed in the side of the corridor, revealing the blackness of the nighttime sky. He turned left and was now hurtling down a hallway, the windows to his right. Behind him he heard something hit the wall with a wet smack. Up ahead in the gloom, another eye opened. _

_Turning his head toward the window, he blew the holophoner and the emerging violent screech smashed the windowpanes outward. He leapt sideways out the window._

_He was six stories above the ground. The city was full of light, and as he started to free fall he had time to notice that the figures walking down the street seemed bleached, nearly transparent. The lights from the hospital windows streaked by him as he stared at the ground below, where one or two cars were passing by._

_And then ripples appeared in the road as if someone had dropped a pebble into it. Glancing sideways, he thought he saw a building fade away in the distance._

_The road was now convulsing, and long strands of melted asphalt rose up toward him as he plummeted down past the third story. From where all the strands converged the street had sunk out of sight, creating a hole. No, not a hole. A mouth…_

_The holophoner had never left his lips. As the tentacles reached for him, he automatically played a song of sorrow, a similar tune he had played a short time before. And as a giant eye opened up in the middle of the mouth, the mists formed an image underneath him, and he fell into it—_

_--and back onto the hospital room floor. The wind knocked out of him, he rolled on his side. The underside of the bed was now empty. The door was still off its hinges. He could hear something sliding down the corridor in the distance._

_He leaped up and ripped all the I.V.s and electrodes from her pale face. He sensed the color seeping away from the walls of the room, and in fact the outlines of the room itself were getting blurry. He lifted her up. She didn't respond._

_Hello again, he said. It's time to get the others. We need to hide deeper…._

-and the mists of the holophoner dissipated as Fry stopped playing.

"Couldn't hold it any longer," he panted. "I'm out of breath and my fingers are killing me."

"What the hell," Bender said, "was that?"

"I don't know, but finally, it was something easy to understand."

Bender's head swiveled toward Fry, who now looked as pale as a ghost.

"You're kidding, right?"

Fry was uncharacteristically grim.

"Something bad's after me. It's hanging around Leela, hoping it can catch me. It wants this holophoner or me, I'm not sure. My only chance is to run, run far away. And then sneak back to help Leela. Help all of us."

"You do realize that you're taking advice from a musical instrument? Or most likely, you're taking advice from somewhere deep in your brain? Now when has listening to your brain ever helped you? When has anything good come of that? And where are you gonna go?"

"Don't know. Off planet for sure. But I need to keep moving. They're coming. I think they know I've played it." And with that Fry was again rushing down the road. They wove their way through a maze of back alleys and corridors, Fry so agitated that he would only stop for a few moments to allow Bender to catch up.

"Bloodbag, wait," Bender wheezed. He really needed to get that metabolism simulator upgraded. "Why don't you come back to your closet and do that sleep thing, then decide tomorrow?"

"I'm only still here because I've been staying away from all my normal places," Fry whimpered. "I've been staying in the dumpster, then at the pizza place I never go to. No. They're waiting back there. Everywhere around Planet Express. They've almost found me. I need to go. Right now."

"Whoa, hold on there.." Bender grabbed Fry's arm, who actually strained for a moment against the robot's grip before looking at his first friend in the future.

"Will you come with me, Bender? I don't think I'll make it alone."

"Me. Sure. It'll be a blast. New pockets to pick, new suckers to meet. This place is getting' old. But one thing."

"What?"

"What's the most important thing you need when running for your life?"

"Ummm.. your feet?"

Bender slapped Fry lightly across the face. At least, as lightly as metal can tap meat.

"Guess again. How are you even goin' to get outta town?"

"Um. Tube? Hoverbus?"

"OK. Sure. And what do you need for that?"

"Um… your feet?"

Metal against meat again.

"OK, you moron. What do I love most?"

"You?"

"Well yeah, but besides that."

Fry's eyes suddenly lit up.

"Money."

"You may have a brain in that head after all. Yeah, dimwit. Cash. When you're on the run, credit cards, debit cards, diamonds—all these things go out the window, cause' they can find you if you use it. The only friend you'll need out in the cold, hard universe is cold, hard, cash. Nixonbucks. If you're going to be on the run, my friendship fees alone are going to add up quickly."

"Yeah," Fry mused. He hadn't really put together exactly how he was going to get off planet. "Yeah, money can help."

"So where's your wallet?"

"Don't you have it?"

"Strangely enough, I don't. I've checked."

"It's gone. Whadami going to do?"

"No problem. We just have to go by the bank this morning and get you a retinal scan to access your account. Or even better, a colonic map."

"Um, never got around to getting one of those. I did do the eye thingie though. But Bender," Fry said, brow furrowed with worry, "I don't feel good about going to a place with a lot of guys with guns who can arrest me."

"It's OK. I'll come along with ya and as soon as the bank opens, we'll pull out whatever we can carry, and then we're off to take over the universe."

"Oh, Bender, thanks." A tear wavered at the corner of Fry's eye. Events were starting to move so quickly he felt like he was spinning out of control again. "I'm so glad you're my friend."

"_He's your friend. We both know you know what's going on. Spill it."_

_He had expected something like this. His dumb little pet had enough trouble figuring out how to operate the TV remote, much less how to burglarize an apartment. The pet in question was at the moment lying on the couch, off-line. Big Boots was standing in front of him, trying to give him the third degree._

"_Why don't you nag it out of him?"_

"_He threw up and fainted just as I was beginning to think something strange was going on. And something strange is going on." She looked at the figure on the couch, gun in hand. "Breaking into my apartment was really stupid. But also kind of gutsy. And gutsy and Fry are not two words that normally hang out together. He must be really desperate, or something strange is going on. So what the hell is going on?"_

"_He woke up in a dumpster two days ago, can't remember where he's been for over a year, and he's paying me to be his friend. And this is after he was paying me not to talk or look for him. You gonna pay me for something too?"_

"_Yeah, I'm going to pay out your wiring meter by meter if you don't help me out. What's this about him paying you not to talk to him?"_

"_The last time he left he said he would pay me not to follow him. And I honorably kept my side of the bargain. Until he started beating me with a stick. And offered me a sailor hat. I'm not made of stone, you know. Well, 40% rhyolite and 40% dolomite, but not stone."_

"_Did he say anything else before he left? Any hint what he was up to?"_

"_Look, I love the blah blah blah as much as any fembot…actually I don't…so how about I just show you what he said?"_

"_You mean you can replay memories?"_

"_Sure, in Dolby 5.1 surround sound if need be. Useful for those clubbing and whorehouse experiences—"_

"_Can it. Just show me."_

_And so he pressed a button, and out popped a little computer screen, hinged on a small rod, for convenient and comfortable viewing. On the screen Fry was slipping on oil and making his little speech. And then Bender was drinking. He really didn't like to replay this sequence. It left him feeling strange. It couldn't possibly be that he could really miss this meatsack, and feel bad about not looking for him. What was that word? Guilt? Nah, couldn't be…_

"_Has Fry seen this?"_

"_You know, he never asked, but maybe he never knew I could. Probably shoulda—"_

"_Hang on Bender, what was that piece of paper he gave you? What did he say there?"_

_Rewind. Fry was saying, "I'm hoping to visit this place, but to go there I need to give that letter to someone close to me. That's you."_

_Voice tight, Leela asked, "OK, bosom buddy, what was in that letter?"_

"_I didn't pay much attention, because it was just a link to some spa or something like that."_

"_Find it."_

_Five minutes later they were ankle deep in the memorabilia of Bender's amusing little antics. Otherwise known as crime sprees._

"_Ya know, I thought I might have placed the letter under this skunk here.."_

"_Forget it—can you zoom in on that image? Yeah, that's it. Hmmm….ReMem Corp, in the smaller Magellanic Cloud."_

_Bender glanced down at the screen. There was only one sentence on the piece of paper, and it was an internet link._

_Tapping a button on her wrist thingie, Leela turned toward her wide screen TV. Moments later a logo faded into existence:_

"_ReMem: Release the Past. Face the Future."_

_An alien similar in appearance to a yarn creature dissolved into a screen, sitting behind a piece of organically shaped furniture that was probably the equivalent of a desk for humans. The figure trilled out a sequence of soothing notes, while a translation scrolled on the bottom of the screen._

"_Honored contact or genetic relation: greetings from ReMem. If you have contacted this link then one of our clients has designated you as an emergency contact and has provided you with our address."_

_The yarn alien leaned forward, strands taut with earnestness._

"_Your client-" a slight pause- "Phillip J Fry, has selected to undergo a selective memory removal-"_

_He heard a sharp intake of air next to him. Funny, the oxygen levels in the room were within normal limits._

"_-this procedure, although perfectly safe-" _

_A jumble of small white text started to blast across the bottom of the screen. Bender caught the words "prohibited" and "illegal" in some of the text._

"_-does occasionally yield side effects that can be troubling to contacts within the client's current and former social networks. In this video we list some of these effects and explain what steps you should take if our client displays any of these symptoms."_

_The figure crossed a few strands together to indicate seriousness._

"_Memory removal is a delicate operation, and particularly with emotionally disturbing memories, erasure can be imprecise, due to symbolic linkages to other memories. Thus our clients can experience disorientation and confusion immediately after the procedure. About 25% of our patients will suffer additional memory losses beyond what they requested. And a few, a very few, may start to systematically lose their entire memory, for reasons that remain unexplained."_

"_He didn't," Leela said. "He wouldn't…"_

"_While most clients are significantly happier with their release from the past, a few may sense a loss and may actively seek an explanation for this feeling, leading to awkward situations if they seek out former friends and other nodes in their social network. As the designated contact, the client is basically trusting you to handle this situation. If you do face such a circumstance, please do the following. First verify that core memories are intact, such as the client's name. Then try to explain to the client that they have had a memory wipe, but revealing as few of the specifics as possible."_

"_I thought I knew who he was, long ago. Now I know I never knew him at all. I never thought he would do such a thing."_

"_Hey, I'm trying to listen here."_

"_Ask if the client has a feeling of persecution or paranoia, and if they have vivid dreams. If affirmative, they are experiencing systematic memory loss, and need medical treatment as soon as possible. Please contact us via this link below, and try to keep the client in one location. Persuasion via communication is the best option, and if necessary, explain the past in sufficient detail to make the client understand the reasons behind the memory removals, and the need for medical attention. If persuasion fails, implied coercion may be used. Physical restraint should only be used as a last resort, because of the resulting psychological and physiological stress will accelerate memory deterioration."_

_Some generic elevator music with an upbeat tempo started to play gently in the background._

"_Once again, the ReMem procedure is quite safe and the situations we describe may never occur. However, if you do, ReMem is there to help." And the bottom of the screen filled with contact information, 24 hrs per orbital cycle, relativistic reference frames included._

_He knew that glint in her eye. He was about to be bossed around. She finished typing in a message on her wrist com._

"_You heard that. It explains everything. We need to hurry up and plan before he wakes up. I'll stay here and talk with him, check his core memories and see if he's become paranoid. If he is, I'll say you're heading out to get him some food, but what you'll really do is stand outside my apartment window."_

"_Why would I want to do that?"_

"_I'll pay you. Now listen. I'll try to keep him at the apartment and even threaten him. But if he is really determined to leave, I'll make sure he exits through the window, so you can stay with him. Once you're with him, keep me updated on his position. I've alerted the authorities, so if you can guide him to some public place with security and alert them, they can manage to get him in custody without telling him why. Hopefully that will reduce the stress of the situation. Do you understand?"_

"_I understand you want to pay me. I'm already being paid not to talk to him, and to talk with him. Betraying him is going to cost you, cause' I'm at my situational conflict limit already. "_

"_Oh yeah? Think of this. Fry may lose every memory of us. Of me. Of you. There is a chance he will never remember who Bender Rodriguez is."  
_

"_That's not possible. I'm unforgettable."_

"_You saw the video. It can happen."_

"_Alright. I'll cut my rate. Ten bucks to stay with him and guide him to the fuzz, if you screw up."_

"_Done"._

"I'm so glad you're my friend."

Bender stared at the red-headed organ sack. When they went by the bank tomorrow, Fry would have to have a scan to verify his identity. If Leela had alerted the authorities, that action would bring the guards down on him, and they would get him to the hospital.

Originally he had not really intended to do anything, except tag along, because all this had been rather interesting. But it was now clear that not only were his pet's memory banks degrading, but his operating system was starting to crash, producing all sorts of weird system errors. At least weirder than usual with humans. Although betrayal was certainly profitable, Bender realized that he could only bring himself to do it if he also thought it would help his friend. Yes, his friend. He would help get him to a repair shop, and they would reformat his hard drive. Maybe they could even upgrade his CPU.

"Aw, geez. You're paying me after all. Let's keep moving and kill some time. And I need another cigar. I'm gonna go through a lot of them tonight."


	17. Part II, Chapter10

The morning dawned grim and gray, casting a dirty hue over everyone and everything outside the Big Apple Bank. But as the restraining force fields vanished, and the earliest bank patrons began shuffling into the main hall, even the early morning gloom couldn't hide the fact that this was one tired-looking crowd that was moving toward the tellers' windows.

Guards and police were everywhere—strolling outside the building, ambling inside the main hallway, leaning against the wall next to the bank teller, or scanning the puffy eyes and drooping laryngeal sacs of an Earthican crowd that, for one reason or another, needed hard cash at 6:30 AM. Either that or they desperately wanted the complementary solyentgreen donut that came with every withdrawal.

The guards seemed particularly intrigued by Fry, and they were not alone. A few of the customers glanced over their shoulders at him too, including a bald man with a goatee, who stood just in line just in front of the robot and delivery boy.

And no wonder. Fry's clothes were stained with all sorts of fascinating earth tones, and some florescent ones too. His hair was a complete mess, with an additional hair spike jutting out from the side of his head, looking like a mutant sibling of the two standard tufts of hair that drunkenly poked up from the matted mess on his head. One side of his face was puffy and red, and his left eye had swollen almost completely shut. And a faint but distinctive miasma of owl poop hovered around him. For once, the cigar smoking robot looked like the normal one of the pair.

For the past four hours the robot and his pet had wandered aimlessly through the tube systems and walked around clean, well-lighted places, never stopping for more than a few minutes. Fry, not used to walking any further than from the sofa to the refrigerator, was exhausted, and the bags under his eyes did not improve his appearance one bit. At the first hint of dawn he and his friend had made a beeline for the bank, and he was still shivering from the cold. No, not just the cold. He kept glancing at the entry doors behind him.

"OK," said Bender. "Remember, Nixonbucks only. No Trisolian water bills or other meltable currency. No talking bills either, we don't want to attract attention. No Wormulon pellet coins either. We know where those come from, right?"

By coincidence, the first customer in line was a Wormulon denizen, who slid up to the opening teller's window. As the colonic mapper slid down toward the slimy creature, the humans in line instinctively turned away in disgust. The bald man bumped into Bender.

"Hey, watch it, cue ball," said the robot.

"Sorry, had a late night, and realized just an hour ago that I needed to be here first thing this morning," yawned the man. He looked over at Fry cautiously. "You look like you've had quite a night yourself."

"Yeah," said Fry. He wasn't in the mood for talking. The steady stare of the guards was demolishing any remaining poise he was able to marshal, and his hands were starting to shake. "Bender, this is a bad idea. I'm getting outta here."

"Hold on there," Bender said. "We've been moving all night, and I haven't had a chance to show ya—"

The small video screen popped out of his chest, pivoting on the small rod, and a small image of Fry with a backpack appeared on the screen. Fry stopped and stared.

"Look, this here is my last memory of you before you showed up a couple of days ago. So you're saying that you didn't do all the things Leela said you did. Then you didn't do this either?"

Business finished, the Wormulon slid off to the side, and an Amphibiosan stepped up to the teller.

Fry watched himself on the screen sliding across the oil slick on the floor, talking to Bender, handing him a letter, and flipping a coin through the air to his distracted friend.

"Geez, I look a lot like me. What was the letter?"

"Oh, just your will. Nothin' interesting there, cause' you didn't own anything interesting."

"Anything about my holophoner?"

"Nope, nothin'."

"That's strange," mused Fry. "Actually, something about that whole memory seems strange—"

The bald-headed man pocketed his cash and his ATM card and started to walk across the main corridor. The teller put the dusty card reader back underneath the counter, grimacing at the grime, and looked at Fry.

"Next."

Fry instinctively patted his pocket, before remembering he had no wallet.

"Colonic map or eye scan, sir?"

Fry eyed the pointy end of the colonic probe. Some unidentified green goo from the Wormulon was oozing down the surface.

"Um, the eye thing, I guess."

A Universal Earthican Eye sensor dropped from the ceiling and configured itself into Human mode. Fry hesitated a moment before looking into the eyepiece.

"Bender-"

"Come on, sausage farm. The sooner we get this done the sooner we're out of here. Way outta here."

Something inside Fry seemed to let go, and with a resigned air of a Hyperchicken about to make his opening remarks, Fry looked into the device. He tensed, and there was a small click.

Nothing happened. The guards still leaned, against the wall, relaxed and at ease. The teller was looking down at her screen, but then smiled up at him.

"The verification takes just a few moments, sir."

Fry shuffled from one foot to the other, glancing around. He saw the bald man reach the exit door, which opened, letting in two familiar figures, Smitty and URL. Just great. Nothing good happened to him with these guys around. In fact, his last encounter had been right here, hadn't it? When Roberto the robot decided to—

"I'm sorry it's taking so long sir, just a few more moments."

There was no sound, no signal in the air, but suddenly it seemed as if the guards had idly drifted over to their teller window, forming a casual but very solid ring around Fry and Bender. Somehow, the atmosphere inside the building had changed, and several bank patrons hastened their exit, and some entering customers hesitated on the threshold of entry. The bald headed man halted at the exit and looked back, frowning.

"I'm sorry sir," the teller said, "but there seems to be a minor problem with your record. We'll need to ask you to step inside and answer a few more questions to verify your identity. Would you mind?-" and she nodded her head toward a door that was marked SECURITY.

"What problem? I don't have a problem." Fry muttered frantically, backpedaling into a huffy-looking Yuppiebot. "Um, never mind about the cash. I'll just come back later-".

"Sir," a guardbot intoned, "please come with us. We just have to verify your identity." And it wheeled up and grabbed Fry's elbow.

"No," squeaked the frightened young man, jerking his arm away and moving back to the teller window. "I don't want to take any money out. Honestly. I shouldn't be spending it anyway, because I can't be trusted with money. Really".

"Well, well," said Smitty, walking up. "Guess who we've got here? I seem to remember this guy bein' here before, don't you, buddy?"

"Oh yeah," purred URL. "Baby's come back to daddy, for sure."

"Bender, help."

"Hey Fry, they just wanna ask you some questions. They probably can't read your eye, it's so puffy and all," mumbled the robot as he backed away out of the group of guards, heading toward the main exit. "I'll just wait over here by the exit."

And then, somehow, Fry seemed to snap fully awake. His swollen eye popped open, and he stood up fully erect, a posture that he rarely used, and that often hid the fact that he was fairly tall for an Earthican.

"They got to you, too."

Fry backed against the wall, staring at Bender, who somehow couldn't meet his gaze. Fry's hands reached out to grab something, anything, but only grabbed a potted plant next to the teller window. He tried to hide behind it, just as the guards closed in on him.

"Bender! Don't let them do it!"

The guards pried Fry away from the plant, stripping off several leaves in the process. Fry began to struggle to free his arms that were being pinned against his side.

"Bender! I didn't do it! I didn't do any of it!"

With a sudden show of strength the young man burst free of the restraining arms, and actually managed to dash forward a few feet before URL and the robots got to him. His chest slammed down to the ground. Bender turned his head away.

"Bender! Listen to me! This isn't right! It's all wrong! I wouldn't be like this to Leela! I wouldn't leave without taking you with me! Something's not right. Bender!!"

Fry's arms were being pinned down behind him. Swiftly other guards around the perimeter were shutting and locking the doors to prevent gawkers from walking in, and others from rushing out.

"Everyone please remain calm," a gentle voice said over the public address system. "The situation is under control."

"Er, what's going on with your friend?"

Bender turned. He had backed up to the exit door, where the bald-headed man, now locked in, had been shoved to the side by the guards.

"What'd you care? He's just having a little malfunction, just like what happens to the best of us robots from time to time."

The guards were approaching Fry with a force field gag. Fry, chest pinned on the ground, arms tied behind him with electrocuffs, managed to lift his head to look at Bender.

"Bender! In the memory! You didn't even bargain with me! You never tried to raise your price! You didn't bargain!"

"Malfunction? He seems fine to me," said the bald man, brow furrowed.

"He thinks something is out to get him. Very small malfunction, really. He's not even interested in killing humans." But his speech synthesizer was now running on background mode. He really hadn't bargained for a higher price from Fry in the memory, hadn't he? Well, the floozibots were pretty high voltage and he had been impatient, but still-

"Oh, yeah, that paranoid feeling. Sure, that's usually a sign that us humans are crazy. Only—"

Bender's head swiveled to focus on the bald man's face completely. "Only what?"

"Well, I've always wondered—if someone really were out to get you, wouldn't one of their first steps be to make everyone else think you were crazy?"

"I've got a memory right here, bonehead."

"Oh, yeah, sure, sorry. Of course--robot memories are flawless."

"Yes they are," Better huffed. Even as he was synthesizing his sarcasm he was reviewing the memory again. Microseconds flew by as he re-experienced every drop of oil sliding down the wall, the flicker of the disco ball lights on Fry's face, the coin spinning through the air, and his bottle of Olde Fortran rising up into the air, and a stream of sweet yet highly concentrated fuel arcing through the air down into his mouth-

And once again, for fifty milliseconds something felt wrong. He didn't like reviewing this memory.

Fry was now gagged and immobile on the floor. Still he struggled furiously as three guards started to drag him toward the security office. He wrenched himself up like an angry sausage and tried to hop away. Smitty planted a boot in Fry's lower back and shoved, and the delivery boy started to fall forward towards the floor.

Bender was annoyed with himself. He had been spending too much time around weak and mushy coffin-stuffers. He was even beginning to think like them. He had assumed that his uncomfortable feeling had been due to this thing called "guilt" about his pet leaving, and him not doing anything about it. Jeez, he might as well join a poetry club, he was becoming so weepily human.

No, there was something about the memory itself…. The bald headed guy was right. Robot memories were flawless, so when something was flawed, it stuck out.

Bender's CPU kicked into high gear. Fry's head slowly inched toward the floor as Bender's processing ticked away the microseconds. All the humans around him seemed frozen in time as he scanned the building for a wireless internet connection. A tenth of a second later he had found one, and a half a second beyond that he was strolling down a back alley of the Internet. Porn sites clustered around him hopefully, flashing for attention.

"Hey, honey," one ad flickered seductively at him. "Wanna bend in directions you've never been before?"

Another sexy ad popped up in front of the other. "No, here, see three-headed models connect to a European-standard socket—and they haven't even expired their warranty, they're so new!"

"Sorry, ladies, love to do it but can't spare the clock cycles. But I am looking for something-"

As Bender transmitted his wishes, the porn ads blanched into black and white, and as one they turned away from him in disgust and disapproval.

"Hey wait! Tell me where they are."

"Over there, I think. Wouldn't even think of going there, myself," an ad muttered in revulsion.

Bender turned and saw what he first thought was a large crack in the internet alleyway, but upon a second look he realized it was actually the opening to a very narrow portal. Bracing himself, he walked through.

Huddled around small message boards were groups of lean, desperate robots and aliens, flaming each other to keep warm. A few noticed the robot appear and scurried over to him, fawning.

"Ecological monitoring, mister?"

"Finite-element model of cosmological evolution? I'll throw in a parallel universe for free!"

Bender brushed the dirty, bedraggled arms aside. God, graduate students were pathetic. They'd research anything for money or food.

"Anyone here know something about alcohol?"

"Alcohol? Do you mean nutritional content, chemical engineering, industrial production, historical significance, microbiology, …"

"Don't try to use those fancy science words to scare me. I mean someone who knows how malt liquor moves around, stuff like that—"

Something jostled at his elbow. He looked down and saw a robot that looked like Tinny Tim's better off cousin.

"I think you mean computational fluid dynamics, sir? That's my thesis at Mars University! I'm judging the effect of the Boussinesq approximation on the accuracy of the-"

"Can it. If I show you some kinda liquid pouring into my mouth, can you tell me what it is?"

The robot's eyes glowed eagerly.

"An ill-posed inverse problem in CF! Why, that could take years. It could even be another chapter in my thesis-"

Bender was already downloading the memory. A screen materialized in front of the two robots, and they watched Bender lean back and slug down a stream of Olde Fortran into his mouth.

"Let's see, you have auxiliary data on temperature, acceleration, opacity… all along your entry port. Not bad, but I'm going to need the uncompressed raw recollections?" The robot paused and glanced at Bender. "You could even do the calculations yourself, if I downloaded you the program."

"Nah, I only like numbers when there are dollar signs in front of 'em."

"Oh, good, I can do it then! I'll need to make sure not to overheat my circuits," said the little robot.

Bender replayed the raw memory. A laminar stream arced through the air into Bender's mouth, where it broke into turbulent streams and droplets as it fell into his gullet—

"This is going to take the full Navier-Stokes equations," the little bot squeaked in awe. "I don't know how precisely I can pin down the properties of the fluid."

The memory replayed in full detail. The liquid fell through the air in a single stream, which became unstable once it passed past Bender's entry port. The perturbative oscillation grew until portions of the stream broke into droplets. The main stream developed eddies and other pockets of turbulence, fractals upon fractals of spatial complexity.

"If I add the temperature data I can guess heat conduction, which combined with the turbulence measurements will give me the Reynold's number and thus a combined measure of viscosity and density. The accelerometer measurement will give me density as a function of temperature, which will pull out the viscosity—"

Over and over the memory played forwards and backwards. The amber fluid splashed back and forth past Bender's entry port. The disco lights and oil droplets reversed back and forth through the air.

"I can't pin down the exact composition, cause' there are too few constraints," the little robot said, apologetically. Some wisps of steam were emerging from its ears from the heat of the computations. "Can you give me any other information?"

"It was booze."

"So it had some alcohol? Well given the well-known properties of that component I can put some bounds on the content—yes, I'd say that what you drank is no more than 70% alcohol by weight."

"You sure about that? Seventy percent?"

"Well, between sixty-five and seventy-five percent. Can't pin it any further. Sorry. Even after 1,100 years, modeling turbulence is still the most difficult problem in classical mechanics." The little bot was squeaking rapidly, afraid of losing its fee to an unhappy customer.

A small sum of money transferred accounts.

"Oh thank you sir! Now I'll be able to upgrade my optical scanner! I wore the other one out when scanning the literature for my thesis-"

Bender heard a sound and swiveled his head. Something small was scurrying away down the alley. Spyware.

"Yeah, yeah, no problem. Go knock yourself out. You know there's a porn webring right other there, right? Have a night out over there. Somehow I don't think you guys are going to get action any other way."

And with that Bender broke off the connection as fast as he could.

Fry's head was still a foot off the ground. Smithy was still frozen in mid-air, his foot on Fry's back. The bald guy next to him was still looking towards the scene, a strange look in his eye.

Bender's CPU lowered its clock rate, and he perceived events moving faster around him. Fry fell to the ground with a gasp. Guards swarmed over him, hiding him from Bender's view. One robot was approaching with what looked like a needle in its hand. Bender looked around. There were at least forty armed humans and robots in the room alone, and he could see more cordoning off the building outside.

"Olde Fortran," said Bender, as he started to walk toward the teller's window.

"Huh?" said the bald man.

"Quality drink. Not like that pansy-ass Object Disoriented piss or Unhics stuff. No filler there. Olde Fortran always has at least ninety percent pure alcohol guaranteed."

Bender gingerly skirted the dogpile of guards and pushed his way through the thoroughly distracted customer line to the teller's window. No one objected, as they were staring at Fry's foot poking out from underneath the jumble of uniforms. The foot had been kicking, but was now starting to jerk more feebly.

"'Scuse me," Bender said to the teller. "I'd like to make a deposit, please."

Fry's foot froze. Even under the pile of guards, he had heard Bender speak. And words like "please" were not what you normally heard from this particular bending unit. "Daffodil," maybe, but not "please".

The teller tore her eyes away from the melee and focused on the robot's penetrating gaze.

"Um, yes sir? How much would you like to deposit?"

Bender pointed to URL.

"Yes. I'd like to deposit my bomb up that loser's rusty metal ass, if you'd please. Do I need to present ID?"


	18. Part II, Chapter 11

A month and a half seemed to fly by before the teller spoke again.

"I'm sorry, sir, what did you say?" she asked, with the resigned tone of someone who knew they were about to lose their coffee break.

"Bomb."

"By a bomb, do you mean an explosive device?"

"No, I mean the other kind of bomb. Yes, an explosive device, you bimbo!"

The teller smiled politely.

"I'm afraid company policy prohibits us from accepting explosives for storage in safety deposit boxes. Safety reasons. The bomb could explode, you know."

"Um, yeah, that's kind of the point. Wait, wait," the robot said. "I don't want to deposit a bomb-"

"But you said-"

From within his chest cavity Bender yanked out the best selling MomCorp-published "Does Not Compute" reference guide for robots ("Explains all facets of human behavior, from Angst through Zealotry!"). He quickly thumbed through the "Poetry" chapter—a fairly impressive feat, since he had no thumbs.

"I was making what you wetware call a 'rhetorical flourish' and all that."

"Um, so if you don't want to deposit a bomb, why are you here?"

Bender's hit his forehead with the book. The metallic sound rang through the room like a 20th-century gunshot, startling the guards, who for the first time glanced over at the fuming robot.

"OK. Start over. I have a bomb. I am going to blow it up unless those guys let that guy go. Is that easier to understand?"

"That's it?"

"Well, they also gotta let us walk outta here."

"Oh, for a moment I thought you were going to try and rob us, since we've just had a big cash delivery this morning," she smiled, nodding her head back toward a pile of large cash bags lying on the floor behind her.

In a sealed room elsewhere in the bank, a manager watching the scene over holosurveillance banged his head on the desk.

"Oh yeah, that too. Put all the money you got into those bags. This is a stickup. Without a gun, though, so not really a stickup. But I've got a bomb. We're good, now?"

The teller nodded, pale, and turned to stuff the bags.

Bender sensed that the room had fallen silent. He swiveled around to survey how every robot, life form, and security camera was now focused on him. It didn't unnerve him. He was used to being the center of attention.

"Get off my partner, or I'll blow up this building. Because that's what a bomb does. And I have a bomb. And not in the metaphorical sense. That means I really have a bomb. Is this starting to make any sense to anybody?"

The guards mulled, uncertain, but then a voice piped out of a speaker grille on the robot holding the syringe.

"Code 238 confirmed. Repeat, code 238 confirmed, plus 235."

"A human head as well?" muttered a guard, pressing his neural transmitter against his skull. "In his chest?"

Bender opened his chest and pulled out Lucy Liu's head.

"Sorry baby, but I'm going to have to make room in there for a bit o cash. Nothing personal, but the money is worth more to me than you are."

"But Bender, I love you," bleated the actress's head, but the jar was already rolling away across the floor, and Bender had already turned back toward the guards.

"What part of 'move' don't you compute?"

"Code 238 confirmed," the human replied into his transmitter. "Evacuate premises. Everyone, move back." He spoke this last to the dogpile on the floor, and the guards reluctantly started to sort themselves out.

Bender scanned the hall. The guards were drifting to every visible exit, grimly standing aside the locked doors. The customers were milling around, a little confused, but Bender could almost time how quickly the information about the bomb threat whipped through the crowd like an actual bomb blast, because everyone suddenly froze in place. For a moment the hall fell completely silent. Then, almost as if a starting pistol had gone off, the customers whipped out their comlinks and rapidly snapped holoshots of Bender. The noise level jutted up to a dull roar.

"Shut up!" shouted Bender. "This is a robbery, so I want everyone to take out their wallet, purse, or transport sac and lie it on the ground. That means you too!" he shouted toward the bald man, who was also snapping pictures. Unlike the others, however, the man was not taking a picture of Bender, but of himself, standing in front of a wall prominently displaying a large digital clock/calendar, under a sign that stated 'Big Apple Bank: we don't take a (big) bite out of you."

The other bank customers dropped their valuables to the ground, most of them still staring at their comm devices, transmitting details of this exciting robbery to their social networks, hoping to increase the advertising value of their blogs. Their networking software helpfully appended gun and disintegrator advertisements to the outgoing transmission.

One by one, the human and robotic guards reluctantly stood aside, revealing Fry lying prone on the ground, with only his foot moving, twitching feebly.

"Cuffs off. Now." Bender snapped, before pivoting his head. "I mean it! Drop it!" he roared, marching up to the bald man, while rotating his head to check on Fry, whose eyes were starting to flutter open.

"Just a sec," the man said, carefully focusing his device on himself in front of the clock. He pressed a button and a small pellet dropped to the ground, which inflated and unfolded into a picture.

A strong odor wafted from the teller's window. Bender swiveled his head away from the bald man.

"Hey! No Wormulon currency! Nixonbucks only!"

"What's going on?" Fry gasped.

Bender swiveled his head back toward Fry, and while preoccupied the bald man pulled two wallets out of his pocket. One was a sleek, expensive-looking model with a digital readout, which revealed itself to be empty when he opened it. The other was an identical model, but much older, and heavily frayed around the edges. The bald man pulled some photos out of the old wallet, dropped it onto the ground, then joined the crowd migrating to the walls of the hall.

"Com'on Fry, we're making our withdrawal and gettin' out of here."

"Really? You believe me? For a moment there I thought they had gotten to you too…"

And Fry's gaunt face suddenly broke into a smile, and for a moment he remained sitting, almost disbelieving, watching Bender sweep up assorted wallets, purses, and purple pulsing storage sacs among the crowd, most of whom were now standing against the wall. The guards were also now all along the wall, watching balefully. Beyond the glass doors the windows across the street reflected all kinds of flashing lights as additional police vehicles skidded to a stop in front of the building.

Fry hoisted himself up, still a bit shaken, and frowned at the noisy crowd.

"What's going on?"

"Here you go, sir," the teller quavered, sliding several bags of currency through a slot underneath her window.

"Wow, Bender, I didn't know you had that much tucked away."

"Uh yeah, I used my special ID."

"What?"

"It's da bomb."

"Bomb? What bomb?"

"UtShay Pupsay. ryFray."

"Huh?"

Bender activated his vocal attenuator and tried to whisper.

"Remember those loser brain ball things on Spheron we fought when we were in the DOOP army? The trip where for some reason I threw myself on a bomb to save your sorry ass?"

"Yeah?"

"Remember that bomb the meatbag who slept with Leela put in me for those delicate negotiations?"

Fry wrinkled up his forehead, concentrating, and then his brow smoothed out.

"Oh yeah! The one that would blow up half the planet if you said the word-"

"Yeah that one."

"ATTENTION ROBBERS."

The voice boomed inside the hall, projected from the outside world by a time-reversed megaphone.

"THIS IS THE NNYPD. THIS BUILDING IS SURROUNDED. STATE DEMANDS TO NEGOTIATOR AT FRONT DOOR."

Both the robot and the human turned to look toward the door, then Fry turned back to Bender. "But Bender, I thought the Professor disabled-"

SMACK. Fry fell to the floor in a daze, smarting from Bender's slap. His face, having gotten a lot of practice in being hit lately, efficiently began to blossom another bruise. Something clattered to the floor. The holophoner had managed to stay in Fry's pocket, even during the twelve-guard pile-up, but the sudden jolt from Bender's slap had been the tipping point, and now it lay motionless on the pale white square tiles of the large hall, looking a little like the scattered customers who had fainted on the bank hall floor, especially the tourist from Oboe Flatte.

"Attention, human meatbags!" shouted Bender to the world. "I've got a bomb inside me that I'm not afraid to use. Even now, my partner is so scared of what I can do he has dropped terrified to the -- Hey you!"

The bald man had been trying to stuff his photos into the new wallet, using his back to shield his activities from the newly-minted fugitives. But the sudden appearance of the holophoner brought an odd expression to his face, almost one of shock, and he had unconsciously turned around to get a better look, his new wallet catching the attention of the larcenous robot.

"Gimme that!"

"My wallet's already on the floor," the man said, jerking his goatee toward the floor. "There it is there."

"Com'mon Fry, grab those bags and let's get moving," growled Bender as he marched up to the man and snatched the wallet.

"REPEAT. ROBBERS PLEASE CONTACT NEGOTIATOR AT FRONT DOOR TO DISCUSS DEMANDS."

"What's that you're trying to hide?"

"I'm not-"

"Pictures? On paper? Who does that? And—hey!! I know that place! I had a great time there!"

Bender stared down at three photos. The man was present in all three. In the first he was standing in front of HAL Institute for Criminally Insane Robots, using a laser welder to weaken part of the wall, where someone had scrawled the date "July 31, 2002". In the second photo he was standing in the lobby of a hotel in front of a sign labeled "Cryogenic Support Group," attaching a sign with the date printed on it and the words "Free Food". The last picture simply showed the man pouring a bucket of water onto a street curb, creating a puddle, with the day visible on a clock tower in the distance.

"Uh Bender, I can't move all these sacks," Fry said. And it was true. Fry had managed to hoist one sack on his back, but his legs were trembling and he was weaving around the floor like the losing end of an ape fight. "Can't we just get out of here? They're coming. They know I'm here."

Bender swiveled his head toward Fry. "I know."

Fry, stared, surprised, at Bender's simple agreement, disbelieving that he was getting no arguments from his friend. Taking advantage of the distraction, the man with the photos slipped them out of Bender's hands and into the new billfold. Shoving the wallet quickly into his pocket, he looked up and found himself staring into Bender's suspicious eyes.

"Tell you what, Fry. We're gonna use this guy to help us carry this stuff outta here. So here-" Bender lifted a sack and threw it into the bald man's arms, "let's get moving. Today's gonna be a busy day."

The bald man staggered back under the unexpected weight of the bag, and the thousands of Nixonbucks inside erupted into a chorus of growls of "I am not a crook, but you are!"

Fry managed to get a hold on his bag, and glanced over at their new partner in crime, who had managed to sling the bag over his right shoulder and grasp the bottom with his left arm slid behind his back. Fry didn't notice that he had slung his bag in exactly the same manner, or that both he and the man tilted their heads the same way as they looked toward Bender.

"OK, where too?" they both spoke in unison.

Bender crammed several handfuls of cash into his chest, then pointed to the main entrance and began marching off, humming the first line of his personal theme song, "Bender is great", to himself.

"Hey, you're forgetting your jar," the man said. "And you sure you want to do that? I mean, there is a back way out through that door over there."

Fry looked at the man closely for the first time.

"Why are you helping us? "

"Yeah, I can only deal with one stupid human at a time," Bender growled. "And leave the head in a jar. I got no more room."

"But that seal isn't designed to hold laying on its side like that. It'll leak and kill her."

"Who made you a jar expert?" Fry said.

"Oh I've learned a few things here and there," the man grinned. "You might say I'm a bit of a jarhead."

Bender and Fry stared at him blankly. The man stared at Fry, sighed, and shook his head. "Geez, you really are—never mind, I've got her." And as he swept Lucy off the floor into the bag, he watched with intense curiosity as Fry scooped the holophoner off the floor back into his jacket.

"Com'mon, stay behind me and we'll walk right outta here," Bender said.

"Wouldn't do that," the man said.

"Why? And why do you care?"

"I want to live. If you march out there and those cops decide to shoot, I'm gonna get caught in between. Look, the side entrance goes into a side alleyway, I saw it when walking here this morning. And they had an armored hovertruck out there."

"If I had a nose, I would smell undercover cop right now," Bender said. "Have bomb, will go where we want. I'm not going to slink out of this bank like we're a bunch of thieves."

"Well, actually-"

"Shut up Fry-"

"-he kinda makes sense. There are a lot of guns out there now."

Fry tilted his head toward the main entrance. The street outside was now crammed with police hovercars, a fire engine, and even what seemed to be two floating gun platforms. Behind each vehicle a jumble of nasty-looking weapons jutted out every which way, making the hovercars look like mobile suicide booths. Otherwise, it was a lovely morning.

"I think they must have been loading a lot of cash into that hovertruck," said the man innocently, almost winking at Bender.

"On second thought, we'll take the safer route, to keep you safe, Fry. But you," the robot turned to the man, "you're going first in front."

"Sure," the man whispered, "but maybe your friend should take a gun from one of these guys."

Nervously, Fry extracted a rifle from a guard standing nearby, who made no motion to resist. Bender glared at the teller and pointed to the side door in question. It clicked open, and within a few moments the trio were marching through a cubicle farm.

"That holophoner, that's a neat instrument," the man said. "Kinda hard to play, isn't it?"

Fry stared at the man again. Before Bender's bomb threat, Fry had been too distracted to pay much attention to this man, but now he felt disquieted as he looked at his companion's shaggy goatee .

"You know something, don't you? About what's going on."

And to his own surprise Fry felt his face twist in sudden anger, causing the man to step away, shocked.

"Who are you? Who's after me? Why can't I remember what happened? Why does Leela hate me?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," said the man. "Who's Leelu? Your girlfriend?"

"You're lying," Bender said, "so you get to go through those doors."

They had emerged from the cubicle farm and had reached a plain ordinary sliding door. Fry eyed the door warily. Doors in this century tended not to like him, and he had developed an instinct about whether a particular door was going to be trouble, just as a man gets a sense about whether an approaching dog will lick or bite. This door seemed to be a biter.

The door slid open and the group moved through into a narrow corridor.

"KEEP IT MOVING, SCUM!"

The two fugitives and their hostage stopped short as they spotted a large line of guards transferring bags of cash down toward an open door, the view outside half-blocked by a large hovertruck. The guards were whipping the bags into the truck as fast as they could.

"Hurry! Or my dear mother is going to find another bank!"

The words were coming from a dark-haired man, standing with his back toward the new arrivals. He shot a glance behind him, and froze—along with the guards, the bald man, Bender (who bumped into the man from behind), and Fry, who brought up the rear and halted standing inside the door frame. The door, sensing weakness, slid sideways, smashing him against into the wall.

Walt, Mom's eldest son, glared at the three intruders.

"Looks like they started to unload the truck-" mused the bald man, "-and now they're trying to put it back in. His eyes flickered over the bag labels. "Mom Corp. Wow, this must be their payroll."

"What kind of idiots are you?" Walt said, his words oily with malice. "Do you know who you're dealing with?"

"Yep, don't let us slow you down," Bender chuckled, waving Fry's rifle toward Walt. Fry looked down at his hands. How had Bender nicked that from him? "Keep it moving," the bending unit glared at his hostage, who had started to put down his own bag. "Who told you to drop it? Let's go."

The three walked single file past the guards, who nearly filled the hallway. Fry eyed all the laser pistols in the room, gulped, felt Walter's stare boring into the back of his head, and forced his eyes toward the hovertruck, which brought the bald man back into his field of view. Which reminded him-

"Who are you? What's going on? You seem to know something."

The man sighed as he wormed past a particularly bulky robot. "OK, I admit, I've seen you before. You played an opera about a year ago, didn't you?"

"You saw me?"

The man nodded. "Yes, I wouldn't have missed it for the world". He caught himself. "I mean it was very good, at least until the end. When you walked into the bank this morning, I thought you looked familiar, but couldn't place you. But once I saw that instrument I remembered. I swear, I have no idea what else is going on. Who's after you?" He glanced back, face curious. "A stalker? Do you still play that thing?"

"Yeah I do. I'm getting better too."

They emerged from the doorway into an alleyway. A flying police mini-drone leapt up off the hovertruck's hood and buzzed away down the alley.

The man looked surprised by Fry's answer.

"You still played after that disaster? I remember—I mean, I would have thought you stopped playing it soon after that?"

"Well you know what they say about the word assume, " Bender said, "they say you're a moron." Both he and Fry looked into the hovertruck cab, and then at each other. It definitely looked much safer in there than out here. Bender turned only to spot Walter loitering outside the door, fingers twitching. "You. Go back inside and lock the door. Otherwise, BOOM!"

"Dear Mother will be using your torso as a garbage can," muttered the second largest stockholder in the company, as he slammed the door.

"Can you really drive this thing?" Fry whispered.

"Yeah, but it's a lot better if you drive."

"Why?"

"If they shoot, the cops are gonna take out the driver first." And with that Bender hopped into the cab and slid to the passenger side. "Drop your loot in here."

While both were preoccupied, the third man dropped his bag, whipped out his camera, and snapped another photo of Fry next to the hovertruck. He scooped the expanding photo off the ground and in a quick motion swept that photo and the three others into the new billfold. He typed a few buttons on the surface of the billfold, and the pocket containing the photos snapped shut, and hissed as it pumped all air out of the cavity.

Fry, clambering up the steps into the cab, looked over his shoulder at the bald man.

"I think he knows something."

"We're out of time," said Bender. "You, put the bag in here."

"No problemo," the man said, slinging the bag into the front seat, after removing Lucy Liu's head from the sack. "I figure you won't mind if I keep her. And don't forget to disable the remote control on the driver's stick—you guys probably don't want your ride cut short. But you were probably already gonna do that."

"Pfft! Um, yeah, right, I was just starting to do that," grumbled Bender as he hastily started ripping circuitry out of the dashboard.

"Why are you helping us?" Fry said.

"Like the Space Pope says, the higher or possibly lower power helps those who help themselves," chuckled the man, as if recalling some private joke.

Policemen started to peek around the corner.

"Common meatbag! Time to move!"

Fry and the man stared directly into the man's face. The man held his gaze, a slight wrinkling of his forehead betraying a hint of nervousness.

"Do I know you?"

"Apparently not. Look, the bank just raised my ATM fees again," the man said, "so I don't mind sticking it to them a little. Now get going before someone shoots me."

"You're coming with us."

"No I'm not. I admit, I'm kinda curious about this, because I actually don't recall---anyway, not important. I can't help you. Can't risk dying, not now." He walked up to Fry and patted him on his jacket. "Good luck with your problem, whatever it is. Hope they don't get you, whoever they are." He was silent for a moment, seemed to fight some internal struggle, then burst out, " What did you say they were trying to do to you?"

"Dammit you chattering sausages, move it!" And a laser beam emerged from the cab, grazing the man's bald head.

Giving one last glance, Fry jumped into the cab and shut the door. Then jumped up, as he had just sat on the pointy end of a circuit board. "Sheez, Bender," he cried, looking over the mess in the cab, "what'd you do?"

"Found this," Bender said, pulling a chip the size of a nickel out of the mangled dashboard and crushing it in his fingers. "Truck's ours now, like I always planned to do. Move."

Fry realized he really hadn't driven one of these hover thingies before. "What turns it on? How do I drive?"

Suddenly the several ton truck gently rose a couple of feet into the air, listing side to side for a moment until it suddenly stabilized.

"I hotwired it for you. And the stick moves it. Nothing to it. Even someone with as few brain cells as you can drive this thing."

"Good," Fry sighed as he pushed the stick forward. The truck lurched backwards a few feet, and he heard something crush. Fry glanced at the side mirrors and then the camera screens above the windshield. He hoped he hadn't just killed anyone. Nope—the bald guy was fine—he was walking, hands up toward the cops visible at the end of the alley behind the truck.

"You idiot! Pushing forward moves you backwards! Isn't that obvious? Where'd you learn to drive?"

"A thousand years ago, on things that actually had wheels," Fry squeaked, as he jerked back on the stick, and the truck sprang forward. He gingerly pushed the stick to the right and his left mirror vanished as the truck scraped against the left wall. The stick was very sensitive and the truck surprisingly responsive, so Fry and Bender bounced around the cab a few times until Fry managed to keep the truck moving forward in a straight line. They were almost out of the alley.

Fry struggled to get comfortable and with his free hand tried to sweep away the wires and broken electronics poking him underneath his butt. While doing so he felt a lump in his rear pocket and for a moment froze in fear.

"What's this?" he stammered, reaching his hand into his pocket, and tossing a brand new wallet at Bender, who cringed before he saw what it was.

"Ooohh, a wallet. Only good things come out of these. Fancy model too," he appraised, "too good for you. When'd you get this?"

"My wallet's gone, remember?" Fry said, eyes locked on the entrance. "I woke up without one in the dumpster."

"This is really a top end model. Look it even has a safe pocket inside, with lock."

"Huh?"

"Yeah, put something in there and it will survive heat, water, space, even a nuclear blast. Look, its been closed. And the timer's on."

Fry glanced over and saw a small display on the wallet's inside pocket:

TIME TO OPEN: 1003:6:2:15:04:54.7

"Thousand what?"

"Thousand and three years," Bender said. "I tell you, great battery in this thing. But what did you want to keep sealed for 1000 years?"

"I told you, it's not mine. Open it."

"Can't," Bender said sadly, tossing the billfold back. And Fry raised an eyebrow.

"You're saying that there's something you can't-"

And then they exited the alley and found themselves in a war zone.

All civilian vehicles were gone-vanished. Instead, to Fry's left as he entered the street, a phalanx of police vehicles squatted in the center of what would normally be one of the busiest streets of NNY. The two floating gun platforms, which bristled with so much weaponry that they looked like porcupines (if porcupines could fly), held position about thirty feet above the ground, facing them. The tube system was shut down and pedestrians had been cleared away, so nothing remained to distract the hundred or so carbon- and silicon-based cops from training their weapons on the armored hovertruck. Glancing right, Fry saw a similar coalition rapidly coalescing a block away down the street. He tried to look at his left mirror before remembering that it was gone, and looked past Bender at the right mirror, and saw that the alley behind him was now filled with headlights and barriers. He couldn't see the bald man anymore.

"What do they think they're gonna to do?" sneered the bending unit. "I can set this thing off before any missile gets within 300 feet of me."

Fry felt nowhere near as confident. He had so many things he wanted to ask Bender, but he couldn't stop thinking of all the kinetic and electromagnetic weapons probably trained on him right now. He rolled up the windows.

In the silence of the cab, Fry thought he heard a faint voice. Bender pointed toward the wreck of the dashboard, then leaned forward and pulled out a small speaker.

"All units hold position—suspect currently stationary at corner of 21st and Broadway, sitting in a Harley Fargo armored transport."

Silence for a moment. Then a bright and cheerful female voice said "This secure law enforcement communications channel is brought to you by Billy's Batons—guaranteed to be a smash—literally!"

"Common', let's get moving."

"Where too?"

"South Street Spaceport, or some place with a rocket ship. We gotta get off this planet, fast."

"Why?"

A tinny voice cut him off. "This is Unit 271. Columbia Pictures University reports a massive power surge in the Mechanical Engineering Department. Multiple reports of damaged memory circuitry among robotic studentry."

"Two-seven-one, please keep channel clear. A situation Double-O twelve is in progress."

"Geez, Fry, someone must really want you."

"Huh?-" Fry was slowly inching the truck around so that they were facing one of the phalanxes.

Just then they heard a familiar voice state, "Standby for direct connection to Mayor's office. Made by the Mayor's aide. Me. Because it's important."

There was the sound of a ringtone, and then an even more familiar voice said, "Whaaa-yess?"

"Professor Farnsworth, this is Mayor Pooenmayer. I'm the mayor?"

"I told you telemarketers where you could put that infernal Torgo's Executive Powder, or whatever name you've given that junk. Good d-"

"THE MAYOR. I'M THE MAYOR, PROFESSOR!" shouted the Mayor.

"The Mayor? Oh my, yes. Well I didn't vote for you before, and I won't vote for you again. In fact, I'm in the process of building my own candidate. I just need to find the right pander processor."

"Professor, we've got a question about one of your employees?"

"Employees? But I have no-"

"Robot. Bending Unit named Bender Rodriguez."

"-Oh, the expendable employees! Why yes, I seem to remember a rather stupid robot-"

Bender fidgeted angrily, but in uncharacteristic silence.

"Professor, he claims to have a bomb inside of him."

"A doomsday device?"

"No, a bomb. Records show that the DOOP installed one during a conflict a couple years ago—"

"Those asinine fools. Those DOOP monkeys couldn't build a doomsday device to shock a baby, much less blow up a planet-"

"Uh, yes. Anyway records also show that you reported neutralizing it, but they weren't clear about exactly what you did."

"Ah yes, I remember. Well, the trigger was so poorly designed that at first I couldn't figure out how to shut it off, so I rerouted the trigger to explode only if Bender said a very unlikely word."

Fry could see the police line nervously start to lower their weapons toward the ground.

"But then Bender said that word. Fortunately the device short-circuited and only caused a little mayhem and destruction. The bomb is worthless now-"

Fry wasn't even able to finish gulping in fear before the first salvo hit their windshield. Ducking behind the dashboard, Fry and Bender huddled as wave after wave of bullets, lasers, and explosives pounded their vehicle. The momentum of the explosions knocked the heavy vehicle back down the street, back toward the other phalanx.

It seemed to go on forever, but finally, after one of the floating porcupines got off a last round, there was a pause. Ears ringing, Fry peeked over the dash.

To his amazement the windshield had held, even though it had fractured into a web of intricate cracks. Viewed through the cracks, the image of the two floating porcupines split into thirty smaller images, creating the impression of an entire alien invasion force floating over the street.

"That," said Bender, "is one hell of a windshield."

"An armored truck, right?" Fry said, dazed. "I guess they make them pretty tough-"

Bender had already grabbed the secure link's transmit button from the tangle of loose wires in front of him, and had leapt onto his seat.

"Is that all ya got, you losers!" He laughed. "I've seen blernsball games that were scarier than that. You want a piece of me? Well here."

He span around and shook his rear end at the crowd of officers.

"Go ahead. Bit my shiny metal a-"

And then the windshield collapsed.


	19. Part II, Chapter 12

for I=1:1000,

.scream("Move!")

end

"Move!Move!Move!Move!Move!—" screamed Bender.

Instinctively Fry jerked the control stick back, only to find his head slamming against the backrest as the truck lurched forward, charging the police line.

At the same moment, from within the bowels of the NNYPD, someone with a sense of humor commanded one of the automated floating porcupines to fire a small missile, aiming directly at Bender's butt. Fry had a fraction of a second to jerk the stick to the left, away from the missile, and then a fraction of a second later to remember that he actually had to jerk the other way, with the result that he perfectly canceled out his first move, and the missile flew into the cab and slammed directly into Bender's posterior.

There was a sharp "CLANG" and the little missile ricocheted off the dolomite derrière and exited back the way it came. The momentum of the hit drove Bender's head through the back wall of the cab, and the momentum of the impact swiveled the truck around its center of mass about 90 degrees. Fry, head knocking against the side door, inadvertently snapped the stick sharply to the left, encouraging the truck to complete a clean 180 degree turn. Looking up, Fry could see the second phalanx pull together down the block. Behind him, the original missile struck the floating porcupine that had launched it, thus demonstrating once again that the universe did not appreciate a sense of humor. It's job finished, the law of conservation of linear momentum kicked back and sipped a daiquiri.

"Geez, Bender, you're sure are a hard ass," muttered Fry as he wrestled with the stick, hopelessly disoriented as he struggled to center the truck down the road.

"LiuhkUnklarko-" were the only muffled sounds that Fry heard from Bender's head, hidden somewhere behind the wall, while his arms and legs flailed inside the cab. One leg hit the stick again just as another salvo of weaponry hit them from behind. The truck swayed drunkenly back and forth down the street toward the second police line.

Fry's inability to drive straight probably saved his life, as swaths of laser beams from the second line sliced through where his head had been a second before. Fry stabilized the truck, and six laser sights appeared on the cab's rear wall, sliding toward his head.

Wave after wave of explosives rammed into the rear of the truck with a muffled thud, bouncing Fry in his seat as he saw more guns rise in the second line. He swung the stick left to reenter the alleyway they had just exited, causing the truck to spin right instead, and lumber directly into a 7^11 store that fortunately had been evacuated just minutes before.

Fry yelled as the truck smashed through the door and hit a standing display of Slurm cans. The cans exploded, obscuring his vision for a moment, and the truck plowed through every shelving unit in the shop before it came to a halt, just as an entire case of Big Pink gum and firewood dumped into his lap. For a precious second everything was quiet, and Fry could hear his heart pounding and Bender's muffled curses from behind the wall. Then something exploded with a "BANG!" and Fry started—but it was just another can of Slurm bursting. He took a deep breath, then glanced up at the camera displays.

All rear displays were out of commission, presumably by weapons fire. The right mirror still held, though, and through the gaping hole in the store front Fry could see a heavily armored SWAT team run out of the alley next to the bank and out of his field of view.

Flicking his eyes forward, the delivery boy saw a sign posted over a door labeled "Human restroom in alley." While his mind was preoccupied, his body, knowing what was coming, fastened his seat belt. Summoning all his powers of concentration, Fry smoothly but firmly pulled the stick back. The truck serenely accelerated forward and smashed through the back of the store and into the alley beyond, where he crashed into the far wall of the alley. The force of the impact dislodged Bender, who fell back against the dashboard with a thud.

"Damn, monkey man, we drew an ace on this one!"

"Wha?" said Fry, desperately conducting a twenty-point turn to move the truck so that it was facing the alley exit, alternatively slamming the front and rear of the truck against the alley walls as he slowly swiveled around.

"I saw the inside of this truck. It's full of money bags! From the volume there must be—" Bender strained his underused arithmetic processor "—roughly $2.71828182 billion dollars there."

Fry quickly tossed a few slabs of wood from his lap out the front window. "Never thought I'd see a natural log in the city-" he began, and then what Bender said struck him full force. "Billions of dollars? In here?"

"Yeah, MomCorp's payroll all right. No wonder this is one hell of an armored truck. That's an awful lot of money. I can't even think about what I can do with all of it." And Bender started to tremble. Fry, who had managed to straighten out the truck, glanced worriedly at his friend as he started to move the truck down the alley.

It was so narrow that he could hear the both sides of the truck scraping the walls. And there went the right mirror….

In the past fifteen minutes Fry hadn't even had a chance to ask, much less think, about what Bender had just done in the bank. He opened his mouth.

"Bender, what's going on?"

"That memory of mine I showed you in the bank?"

"Yeah?"

"It's fake."

"Fake? Whaddua mean?"

"Never happened. It was put there to make sure we would turn you in to the police. But more important things first. You gotta do something for me. I can't do it myself."

"What?".

"Gotta adjust my avarice amplifier. Gonna need to set it for a higher level for what we're facing. Two billion dollars, I don't know-"

And he pivoted his head away from Fry as a small panel door opened on the back of his head.

Fry could see a few small vehicles dart across the opening of the alley, but risked glancing at the panel. It was a simple knob, encircled by numbers ranging from '0' to '11'. Currently it was set at '4'.

"I need to boost my greed level to handle this amount of cash," Bender said. "Raise it up a few counts."

"Um, OK," Fry said, reaching out while keeping one eye focused ahead. Then it hit him.

"You mean all this time I've known you—your greed level's been only set to _four_?"

"Turn the damn knob," thundered the bending unit.

Fry complied, just as he felt the vibration of several photon charges hitting the back of the truck. The SWAT team must be in the alley now.

"Ah, good, we've made a good start in cash for this trip," Bender said. "I mean, another billion would have been better, and we still need to hijack one of those floating platforms—"

The truck exited the alley, and Fry, having rehearsed this moment several times in his mind, gingerly pushed the stick to the right, while ignoring the mass of police vehicles desperately trying to rearrange themselves on his right. The truck pivoted smoothly to his left, revealing only a couple of police vehicles ahead, cordoning off the side streets. That and a police hovercycle now sitting five feet in front of the truck. URL and Smitty, sitting on the cycle, snapped their heads up.

Smitty jumped out of the sidecar just before the cycle and URL disappeared from Fry's view, and an instant later something thumped underneath the truck.

"So Bender, that party you showed me, with me giving you money, wasn't true?"

"Rub my face in it, why don't you? That was the best party I never threw. And there were _floozies_! Latest generation processors and all. I think I'm gonna keep it. To hell with reality."

A metallic arm flew over the window sill of Bender's door, and URL's head appeared.

"Hey baby, I'm going to go Guantanomo on you!"

"Fly's open," Bender said.

"Huh?" URL said, looking down. "Wait, I don't even wear pants-"

Fry managed to brush against a lamppost, and URL vanished.

Fry saw an expensive-looking silver hover car pull through the police cordon half a block ahead. Geysers of asphalt erupted on his sides and in front of him, as from behind the crowd of police cars and the surviving flying platform peppered the street with explosive and photonic charges.

"Wait, so that wasn't me, who was it?"

"It was an implanted memory, you moron. A simulation."

"Why?"

"I don't think you left last year. I think you were taken."

A particularly large crater rising in front of him briefly gave him a flashback of his last holophoner vision. A steady hail of projectiles and photons pounded the back of the truck, but the two friends glided smoothly over the gaping potholes in the ground, crashed through the police barrier, and entered the regular busy streets of NNY. The crowd of police vehicles jammed at the cordon as officers jumped out and started to pull the barriers out of the way.

Fry was beginning to realize that since the tires couldn't be shot off an armored hover truck, they were going to be very hard to stop-

He stopped. The traffic light ahead had turned red, and all the lanes ahead were occupied. Fry sat behind the silver hovercar. It was a convertible, and the top was down, revealing that the driver had some kind of phone pressed to his ear.

"What the hell are you doing?" Bender said.

"Red light."

"Run it, you moron."

"But that'd be dangerous, and break the law."

"What did we just do twenty minutes ago? Hey neat, look what I found under the seat-"

Fry thought for a moment. They had just robbed a –

"Oh yeah, OK."

And he pulled the stick back, moving the truck forward, nudging the silver hovercar, crumpling the bumper. Startled, the driver jumped out, phone still to his ear, jabbering away.

"Call you back." As the driver looked down at his phone, pressing buttons, he said, "Hope you have a good lawyer, buddy."

"Sorry, but get out of the way, or I'll run you over," Fry said.

"Who the hell you think you are? Do you know who I am? I'm the Mayor's a-" and then Chaz looked up and he and Fry's eyes met.

Chaz looked puzzled for a moment, and then his eyes widened.

"YOU!"

He pressed a button on his phone. "Don't move. By the full authority of the mayor's office, I place you under –"

"Hey buddy! "

Chaz looked over at the robot.

"Yeah?"

"Get your skinny ass the hell out of our way, or we'll move it for you."

Chaz flicked his middle finger at the delivery boy and robot.

"Bend this, buddy."

Then he haughtily turned his back while pressing the phone back against his head. Fry risked leaning out of the side window and looked behind him. A stream of police vehicles was converging rapidly on them, and the remaining flying porcupine-like thing was pulling over them, a large hatchway starting to open on its underside. That couldn't be good.

"Excuse me, please."

It was the second time today that Bender had used the magic word, and somehow Fry knew no good would come of it. He glanced askance at Bender, and his pulse quickened at the sight of the missile launcher in his friend's hands.

"Found this under the seat. Forgot that this is standard police issue—did wonders with the jaywalking problem here a few years ago," Bender mused.

Chaz scornfully flicked a glance at the two friends, still talking on the phone. He saw the launcher, and tapped a button on his watch. A personal force field congealed around the mayor's aide.

"Go ahead, try," he sniffed.

Bender waved the launcher in a friendly way, then took aim.

"Who said I was aiming for you?"

The missile struck the silver car, flipping the two ton vehicle into the air like a plastic tiddlywink. Chaz flew through the air and hit the sidewalk, falling unconscious to the ground. Fry tried to feel bad, then decided that we would never be nominated for sainthood. A shadow passed over him and he looked up as the car spun end over end into the air, before being blocked from his view by the cab roof.

A very loud CRUNCH echoed down the street.

"What's going on?" Fry whimpered.

"Use your top-view mirror."

"Wha-"

"Top view mirror. You know, rear view, top view, bottom view." And Bender leaned over and pressed a button underneath one of the cameras mounted above the windshield.

The image flickered, and then the sight of the flying platform appeared on the viewscreen.

"Huh, it's getting bigger," Fry said.

"MOVE, you dumb mammal!" panicked the robot.

Even as his mind was still piecing together what was happening, Fry's arms jammed the stick forward and the truck leapt backwards as fast as a triple reinforced Harley Fargo truck could. A moment later the pavement in front of him was filled with the fiery wreckage of the flying platform, now mingled with the silver hovercar. Fortunately, the light had changed and the other vehicles had run forward out of harm's way. Chaz, lying on the sidewalk, seemed to have one shoe on fire, but was in one piece, thanks to his force field.

The truck was accelerating backwards so quickly that when the bomb in the wreck finally exploded, the shrapnel seemed to waft toward them in slow motion. Several police hovercars, that moments before had been in hot pursuit, swerved desperately out of the path of the hovertruck and the fiery streaks of molten metal. Vehicle after vehicle crashed into storefronts and apartments as the truck zoomed backwards in a straight line.

The debris was finally catching up with the truck, and out of the corner of his eye Fry could see an intersection to his left. Without thinking he veered the stick toward the left, and in a blink the truck had pivoted left and continued backwards down the street, exactly as he had wished. Part of him admired the beauty of the flaming streaks crashing in front of him, but then he saw another police hovercycle turn the corner, and bear down on them.

Horns blared, and flame e-mails were transmitted as all manner of taxis, private vehicles and pedestrians dodged out of the way of the backwards truck. Just as additional flashing lights appeared around the corner in pursuit, Fry jerked the stick right and the truck turned right so fast that one side lifted four feet off the ground before the internal gyros listening to gravity's advice again.

"Heh, heh, heh. Ya know, it's good to finally be a plain old bad guy for once, and not have to come up with this endearing anti-hero angst crap," mused the robot. "By the way, turn around."

"No time," Fry replied, "and it's easier for me to drive like this. Left is left, and right is –um--"

"Right. How can you see where you're going?"

There was a sickening thud and the wreckage of a cart containing black market human organs plopped down around and on the truck cab. Fry was thankful the roof was still intact. Something that looked like a pancreas hit the driver of the police hovercycle, and he swerved and crashed.

"I can't! The mirrors are gone!"

"Abandon ship!" Bender hollered, and opened the door. But as he leaned out he peered to his right looking up the street and cried, "Right, Fry! No, other right-"

Fry managed to finally adjust the stick the correct way as a dump truck flashed by, Sal shaking his fist, shouting, "Gets glasses, youse idiot!"

Bender detached his head and extended his arms, lifting his head to peer over the truck.

"Where … going?" Fry heard Bender's voice faintly from above.

"I don't know! Just get us away from the bank!" Fry shouted as loud as he could.

"Turn … way!" And Bender's other arm pointed left, nearly punching Fry in the face.

Left, left, right, left, right, right, right, left—the truck wound it's way through the streets of NNY, scattering trash receptacles, uprooting suicide booths, forcing people, aliens, and robots alike to leap for safety in the nearest doorway, and in one case, the sewer.

"What'do we do?" Fry asked, starting to panic now that he had a moment or two to think. Ever since he had produced the holophoner vision nearly twelve hours ago, all he had really planned to do was to run for his life, and to withdraw some money. So now what? And where to go? He didn't know how to get to any spaceport from there, and if he did, what would they do once they got there?

"Keep … oving," Fry heard faintly. "Don't talk … anyone … til … planet."

"Moving? Why?"

"Memory … ..anted. … took …way … want …gain."

And what about Bender's memory? Fry thought. Somehow he felt he was on the cusp of something. And Fry took another wild turn and saw the familiar entrance sign of the Cyrogenic lab pass by.

_He walked down the street in a random direction that he knew could not be random…_

Two nights ago Fry had walked slowly down the route he was now taking, confused, unnoticed, and alone, as a thunderstorm washed out the evening sunset. Now it was a beautiful summer morning, the air fresh from the recent rain, and he was no longer alone, if $2.7 billion dollars and a kleptomaniac robot could be called companionship. But now he was more confused than ever, and unfortunately he was very noticeable now.

But just like two days ago, he suddenly knew there was only one place he could go to, if he were to have any chance at all. It was playing into the hands of whatever was after him, but he was out of options. He wrenched the truck around corners that he knew would lead him back to the one place where someone cared (used to care?) about him. Up ahead (behind?) him he could see the flashing lights of police vehicles reflected off the second and third-story apartment windows. They were close. He didn't dare try to stop and turn the truck around, but he actually seemed to be driving much better backwards, and all the other cars on the road seemed to have safety avoidance systems that allowed the truck to sail down the street without even having to wind back and forth.

The truck now wound along the Hudson River, but something that sounded like a scream came from Bender's head, so Fry swerved back inland again. His timing was a little off, and he ended up smashing through a link fence surrounding an unused industrial lot. Funny how chain link fencing had never changed over a thousand years.

The buildings were getting more familiar, like he was strolling through the memories of his recent past. There went O'Zorganax, here went his first apartment, there was the Robot Arms—

A faint chorus of screams reached his ears, and a moment later he felt a bump. A rain of umbrellas, chairs, and coffee cups crashed around him and to his left he saw a small crowd huddled against a bistro entrance. His heart gave a little lurch, as he realized he had just run over the spot were he had first told Leela he loved her.

And there it was. Planet Express. Just passed it. Way passed it.

It was over a block away now, and rather than stop and have to think about the controls again, Fry turned left and began to circle around the block. Even over the air blast through the windows he could start to make out the sound of sirens growing louder.

He made the final turn and slammed the stick as far to the right as he could. Like a hippopotamus gracefully pirouetting on ice skates, the truck spun around, the left side lifting slightly off the ground again. Once the blur of the outside world resolved, Fry could see Planet Express again, now coming toward him.

"Thanks for the warning," Bender snapped, literally, as he snapped his head back into place on his body. "I almost let go of my –WATCHIT!"

Fry, distracted by Bender, looked back at Planet Express. He was now driving on the sidewalk, and directly in front of them sat a very familiar dumpster. As he realized he was going to hit it, a familiar face poked up over the dumpster rim. True to his word, Dr. Zoidberg had been guarding the dumpster, waiting for his companions.

Since Fry was wearing a seat belt, the impact against the dumpster didn't throw his body over the hood, unlike, say Bender, who was pitched headfirst into the dumpster. Zoidberg, meanwhile, was launched past Bender and somersaulted into the cab. The law of linear momentum frowned, huddled with Newton's first law, then shrugged.

"My good friend Fry! I have been guarding the dumpster very well for you! And you'll never guess what I found in it! Oh look, here it comes now!"

The Decapodian affectionately slapped Fry on the shoulder while pointing with his claw out the window. The force of the slap drove Fry's face into the mess that had once been the dashboard, and he lost control of the truck. It was probably a good thing his head was down, though, because at that moment thirty pounds of used alien baby diapers flew into the cab and smacked against the rear wall.

The heavy truck had only been slowed slightly by the half-full dumpster, but the dumpster was still pressed against the truck, throwing a shower of sparks as truck and dumpster careened back and forth across the street, the dumpster valiantly resisting like an outclassed sumo wrestler. Bender poked his head out of the dumpster just as one corner of the dumpster caught an edge of the curb. The truck lifted the dumpster off the ground and threw it forward, giving Bender barely enough time to leap back into the cab.

The dumpster tumbled forward, an awkward square log, until it crashed against the front of the Cygnoid pizza joint, piling the rest of its trash right on its doorstep. The Cygnoids rushed out, dancing joyfully at the sight of their windfall of new ingredients, and cheerfully waved their antennae at the departing truck.

Fry lifted his head up. The hood had collected quite a collection since the collision, and in order to see Fry reached forward and swept away pieces of dashboard, windshield glass, Big Pink, Slurm cans, what looked like a human spleen, and a venti latte. He felt something wet and slimy trickling off the rear wall and down into his pants, but at the moment he couldn't care less, because now he saw that the truck was barreling directly toward Planet Express.

He yanked the control stick hard to the right, and the suddenness of the move, along with the speed of the vehicle, threw the left side of the vehicle up in the air. The internal gyroscopes, damaged by the collision with the dumpster, gave way, and the world tilted at a crazy angle, as the hovertruck balanced precariously on its right side.

From his point of view, Fry could see the new doors of Planet Express grow larger and larger, tilted at a 45 degree angle. The truck was only a hundred yards away from the entrance, and even over the screams of Zoidberg and Bender, Fry's ear picked out a new noise, a high-pitched alarm.

Zoidberg, shrieking, grabbed both Bender and Fry in tight bear hugs, a move which caused Fry to yank back on the stick. The truck accelerated even faster toward Planet Express, just as Fry caught the first reflection of a police siren off the front door.

Suffocating in Zoidberg's embrace, Fry flicked the control stick rapidly back and forth to try to keep the truck balanced, but it was a doomed effort, and the truck fell over onto its right side. The added friction finally acted as a brake, but they were only twenty feet away from the entrance, and Fry braced himself for the impact.

His mind was past shock and fear, and watched the unfolding events with a detached curiosity. What was that alarm? Oh yeah, the "Fry detector" Hermes had installed. It must have gone off when the truck has penetrated the 100 foot tripwire surrounding the building. Well, he was about to be detected in a big way, wasn't he?

The new entry doors were now so close that Fry would make out the individual letters of "Planet Express" etched in cursive into the glass.

It was really too bad about the doors, Fry reflected. He had actually liked them.


	20. Part II, Chapter 13

Fry, Bender, Zoidberg, the sideways hovertruck, 2.7 billion Nixonbucks, the assorted contents of a convenience store, a pile of human organs, the fixings from a fancy coffee shop, and the contents of a dumpster burst through the main entrance of Planet Express. A wave of glass, plaster, and other debris surged through the entrance hallway and into the main hangar, upsetting the conference table and utterly ruining the zebra-striped lizard skin covers on the chairs. The truck slid completely into the building, before finally coming to a rest. A steady rain of Big Pink, exploding Slurm cans, windshield glass, and Nixonbucks pelted everything inside the main hangar, while a lopsided sign reading

"ACCIDENT FREE WORKPLACE FOR 2 DAYS"

reset back to zero again. A flock of disturbed owls flitted throughout the great open space of the hangar.

Groaning, Fry unbuckled his seat belt and landed on top of Zoidberg, who in turn was already lying on top of Bender. Fry had a moment to be grateful that the truck had tipped over onto its right side, and not onto its left, before the startled Decopodian squirted ink all over his jacket.

Bender gave a mighty shove, and Fry and Zoidberg tumbled through where the windshield had been, falling to their hands, feet, and claws amidst a mash of circuit boards, broken glass, and sugar packets. Eyes closed against the fine dust swirling around, Fry moved his hand forward and felt something wet and squishy, embedded with chunks of broken glass. Against his better judgment, he opened his eyes to learn that he was massaging a human stomach.

"May I have that?" warbled Zoidberg cheerfully, eyes riveted on the stomach.

"Hold on. I may need another one before this is through," Fry moaned, clutching his own stomach and trying to focus all his concentration on preventing himself from hurling onto the floor. Fortunately, his own stomach was empty, since he had eaten nothing other than his Bachelor Chow from last night. Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for the other stomach, since its contents had just oozed over Fry's hand, creating a smell that caused Zoidberg to urdulate in pleasure.

"Great sugarcane in a hurricane-"

Still a bit dizzy from the crash, Fry lifted his head and managed to focus his eyes on Hermes, who was peeking from behind an overturned chair, the lizard skin covering his head. Out of the side of his eye he caught a motion, and turning, he saw Amy gingerly duck out of the restroom, shoving the door open against a pile of debris.

Seeing these familiar faces, despite the expressions on them, brought a flood of relief to his mind, and suddenly he was exhausted. He wanted nothing more than to rest his head on this floor. Using his left arm to clear away some Slurm-soaked circuit boards, he lay his head down onto the ground, closing his eyes for a moment, enjoying the solidity in a way that only pilots and soldiers could appreciate. He knew the police were coming, but he wanted only a moment….

Tap, tap, tap…

He didn't want to, but the sound left no choice—it was too close to his head. Raising his eyes up, he saw a gray boot tapping the floor three feet in front of his face.

"This is going to be good, isn't it?"

Sitting up, he looked higher. Black pants, white T-shirt, purple hair, tight-pursed lips, hands on hips – well, he had been hoping for this, hadn't he? So why did he feel like two stomachs were now lying on the floor?

Her hand was poised over her wrist thingy.

"I was pretty sure you got my message a couple of days ago. So let's call the police now, before you start on the excuses, OK?"

The words were barely out of her mouth when a chorus of sirens drifted from the newly widened entrance of Planet Express. Risking a peek over his shoulder, Fry could only see a sea of flashing lights dashing to a halt in front of the street. Robots, humans, and aliens were already bursting out of the police hovercars, even before they had fully stopped. He even saw a firetruck and ambulance pull up. Before his hopes had a chance to rise at the sight of the ambulance, he saw the hearse arrive.

Leela frowned down at her wrist.

"Funny, I don't remember ordering the precognitive call feature—"

"HeyBoots,GreatToSeeYaHeyAmyPinkAsEverISeeWowYouSureAreAGreenSomethingBySomethingTodayHermesMyFriendWellPleaseExcuseMeForAMomentWhileIPressThisButtonOverHere-",

Fry had never seen Bender move so fast, as his friend dashed by Leela and headed directly toward the gaping hole that used to be the Planet Express Entrance. Actually, toward a wall panel that had miraculously missed being taken out by just a few inches. Bender slapped a big red button on the panel.

Suddenly the dolomite-reinforced exterior walls slid sideways, sealing the entrance, just as the first officers were converging on the entrance, guns drawn.

The air was filled with low rumbling and slamming sounds, and the sunlight streaming through the windows throughout the hangar was suddenly cut off, plunging the entire interior into a pale gloom. Fry blinked his eyes, then understood. Bender had activated the Professor's Xmas defenses. The Planet Express building was now a fortress. They had a little time. But to do what?

The interior floodlights in the hangar burst on, casting everything into a harsh light. Leela's eye flicked away from the overhead windows back down to Fry, then over to Bender, who was now languidly pimp-walking back to the truck.

"Bender, care to explain what's-"

"Sorry, can't chit-chat. Got three minutes to stuff away a couple billion bucks. Hammerspace, don't fail me now—"

And the robot launched himself into the truck cab, expanding the hole in the back of the cab, seizing armloads of cash, and cramming it into his chest as fast as the servos on his arms could operate.

All this had happened so quickly that all the carbon-based life forms in the room had remained frozen in place. Now Zoidberg turned back to fishing for organs on the ground, while Hermes, Amy, and Leela turned toward the red-haired delivery boy, still crouching on the floor in front of Leela.

"Um, funny story," Fry began, before he felt a hand grab his jacket and lift him off the floor.

"What in the HELL are you doing here?" the cyclops growled. And then her nose wrinkled. "And what's that smell?"

Good question, Fry thought. Over the past two days he had slept in a dumpster, cleaned a Cygnoid pizza oven, kissed a dirty bank floor, and had been splattered by Slurm, human guts, off-world baby poop, and Zoidberg's ink. It was all kind of blending together into a generic "Warning! Do Not Touch!" miasma. He futilely tried to wipe off the ink, while speaking quickly.

"Somebody's after me."

"Yeah, I figured that out."

"Good. I mean, not the police—well, they're after me too now, I guess-"

"Fry-"

"Leela, I didn't run away. I didn't get my memory wiped. Something or somebody took me." A new thought fought its way through his tangled feelings. "They might have even wiped my memory when I didn't want them too."

Leela seemed less than impressed. "Took you."

"Yeah. So you see, I didn't abandon you or the baby."

"Baby?"

Fry glanced sideways toward Amy's voice. The young Asian woman was staring at him like he had just swallowed an owl.

"Yeah. Little-little- Eureka!"

"You've got it?"

"Yeah! Eureka. The little baby Leela had from our relationship that she wanted to keep secret—uh--crap."

He didn't want to look over at Leela, preferring instead to watch Amy's and Hermes's eyes open wider and wider until he half-expected them to join the other eyeballs he thought he had seen scattered on the floor…

"Guys, I don't think Fry is feeling well, " Leela said, voice as calm and steady as if organizing a routine delivery. "Let me talk to him alone for a moment. Hermes, can you get the Xmas doors back open for us?"

The bureaucrat scratched his chin.

"Problem is, dere's a retinal scanner under dat button. I think we're gonna need the Professor."

"Fine, can you go find him them?"

"Um, actually, Hermes," Fry began-

"Hermes." It was a simple statement, but there was a quaver in the way Leela pronounced the name that impelled Fry to look back at her. She seemed calm, but then he looked down at her hands. They were balled into fists, and were quivering slightly.

"Sure, Leela. I'll get 'im. Come on, Amy. I'll head on up to the lab. You search the Angry Dome. He was pretty upset abou' that cable bill the other day-"

The intern started to follow the Jamaican, but Fry had time to notice Amy dawdling at the door, just before his captain spun him around.

"So you've decided to come clean after all. Just spill it all out in front of everyone."

"I'm sorry, Leela, but please, you gotta believe me. Something isn't right. I didn't leave on my own."

Her eye bored into him, lid narrowed. It was almost as if an F-ray were scanning him.

"I see. You were kidnapped. Sure. And why didn't you happen to mention this last time?"

"Well, Bender just figured it all out."

"Bender? When?"

"Just before we robbed the bank this morning."

"How convenient for him then, huh? Don't you remember the time when he told you that you could fly, right around the time that off-world medical school was offering $10,000 each for Earthican bodies?"

"Yeah, good times, good times. Thank god for Thompson's Teeth and Bone glue. But look, we don't have a lot of time here—"

Even now he could hear some faint pounding on the thick doors sealing the hole of the front entrance, and some official-sounding voice being projected over the street outside.

"But wait, wait, Fry," she said silkily, grinning tautly. "I want to hear more. Who wants you? Why this complicated scheme to abduct you during--what must you admit--must have been a very convenient time for you?" The sarcasm in her voice was as thick as those diaper contents still oozing down his underpants.

"I don't know who, and I don't know why," he replied simply. "Wait, I have a feeling-" he rummaged around in his coat. There was the spare can of Bachelor Chow, but—how could he have trouble finding it?—ah yes, the interior pocket.

The case was long gone, left behind on the floor of Leela's apartment, so it was a little scratched, maybe even a little dented. But considering what it had gone through, Fry thought the holophoner still looked lovely as it lay in his hands, gleaming in the harsh light of the overhead lamps.

Smiling softly, he looked up toward Leela's face, then started. Maybe it was the white glare of the lights, but her face seemed to have gone pale, almost white, which made her lipstick seem positively florescent.

"The holophoner. That's your holophoner."

"Well, yeah," Fry said.

"How'd you get that?"

"Um, don't you remember? It was in your closet. Last night."

And then something happened that Fry had not seen since Leela had first admitted sleeping with Zapp. She blushed. Deeply, suddenly, and vividly.

"Leela?"

No answer.

"Leela?"

_The coffee cup smashed onto the floor._

"_Damn, sorry. Don't know why I'm so fidgety."_

_She turned away from the closet door. He was nervous too. She could tell from the voice. And suddenly, she felt much calmer. He was nervous too. That was kind of sweet._

_She walked out into the living room and into the kitchen, where he was clumsily trying to mop up the coffee with his tie. Chivalry wasn't dead after all. A faint memory of a young man standing in a puddle on a street corner elbowed her way into her mind, and she shoved it right back. No more of that._

"_That's OK. There's plenty more cups."_

_He looked around her kitchen. For the first time, she noticed how sterile and rather depressing the whole room was. _

"_Do you have a broom?", he asked._

_Smirking, she pulled her laser gun out of her dress's hidden pocket. _

_Hidden pockets for weapons kept going in and out of style. Fortunately, pacifism was in this year, at least according to Amy, so she had gotten the dress during a fire sale. Literally._

"_Better. A laser gun."_

_Shooting things was very relaxing, but as the vapors of what had once been her souvenir mug from her days as Beck's groupie (don't think of it), her startled date (he was a date, she could call him that, right?) leapt back a few feet. Even as she worked to suppress her fear that she had weirded him out, she noticed and admired the combat stance he had automatically tensed into. Strange and mysterious past indeed. Violent too, from the likes of it. A hunger she had not felt in a long time squirmed in her stomach, and she realized she was grinning lopsidedly at him. _

_What was she supposed to be doing?_

"_So that's why you don't have a dustpan," he whispered, smiling._

_And suddenly the tension and her fear of rejection were broken, and she knew that everything was fine, and was going to be just fine._

"_I live very frugally," she whispered back. "Except for clothes. Certain kinds of clothes. For special occasions. Let me show you. I'll be right back."_

_And now she was back in front of her closet, sliding back the mirrored door, staring at her reflection, at her eye, as she had had all her life. At times she hated how she looked, despite all the mantras she had repeated to herself from the holohelp downloads in college. But now—now she actually admired how well her hair matched her dress._

_And the door was sliding open, and her hand was brushing along the tops of her outfits. She felt like she was cataloging her past, with each dress a memory._

_She frowned. Something was not right. Something was missing, or out of place. But as she stole a look in the closet, everything seemed to be in order, dresses organized as usual. She stared hard at one of her favorite purple dresses. For a moment she thought it was to the right of that threadbare, tacky green dress that she could never bring herself to donate. But no, everything was fine, in place. A little disquieted, she ran her hand across the dresses again, and then the top of the shelf. All the knickknacks were there, including that damn holophoner. Speaking of things to donate—it was high time she got rid of that. In fact, she would do it tomorrow._

_Plucking the negligee from the closet, she closed the door and changed, yellow dress a pile on the floor. Wow, it was cold in here after all. She stared at herself in the mirror, rubbing her left calf with the opposite foot._

_Awkward memories with this outfit, but somehow it didn't seem to matter anymore. She had paid for her misjudgments. She could let go of the past. Shyly, she opened the door of her bedroom._

_She didn't have to worry. He was struck dumb. He was delighted, and she was delighted in turn. Funny, smart, a gentlemen, yet bearing a shady past, financially secure, and yes, good-looking—could he be the one? Did she really care right now?_

_Apparently not, since they were now lying on her bed, her feet were tingling, her nerves beyond ticklish, and her soul on fire, her hunger devouring her thought. Is this just lust? No, the burn was deeper. She felt like she had finally reached the end of a long winter journey, and was now bundled up in front of a fireplace. And then she allowed herself to stop thinking and just enjoy the delicacy of his touch. She couldn't really resolve specific details after that, but she remembered looking over at the stand next to her (their?) bed, and staring at the picture of them dancing together. And somehow she suddenly felt that some day they would not be two but one, forever. A tear ran down her face. A tear of joy. Her years of suffering in the orphanarium, the hollowness of her working years, the hell of her mistakes at Planet Express, all melted away. She was happy. Her journey alone through life was over._

_But why did she keep thinking she heard a faint giggling?_

"Leela?"

"You were there. Last night."

"Of course I was there," said Fry. "I broke in there to get the holophoner, because I think something wants it-"

"In my closet."

"Yeah, your closet. And I got trapped when you brought Gary in, and then-"

He trailed off, astonished. Leela had, if anything, gotten even redder in the face, and she looked away for a moment, both of them struck dumb. From above they could hear the faint hum of hovercars as the police floated above the building, probing for potential entry points.

"You watched us. I remember hearing you laughing."

"Um…what?"

Fry risked looking around. Bender was still rooting inside the cab, and he could see Amy by the conference table, twenty feet away, staring at Leela with the same puzzled look Fry knew he must have on his face. Looking back at Leela, he saw her staring at him again. Except for a faint flush in her cheeks, her face had completely drained of color again. And then, a small tear formed at the base of her eye and ran down her face.

"I—I never thought you'd do something like that. I thought you were weak, lazy, and a slob, but basically decent. A friend. Once."

And then she was red again in the face. But it wasn't from embarrassment, Fry realized. In fact, he had never seen her face like that before. He tightened his grip on the holophoner, instinctively.

"That was one of the sweetest memories I ever had, and now all I want to do is forget it. I want to forget you. I want you gone. For good. I want you to rot away in jail."

"No way," Fry said, confused. "They'll get me for sure then." The look on Leela's face scared the hell out of him, but it was time to be a man. He had to stand up to her, explain what was going on.

"Fry?" Amy said. "What do you think you're doing, hiding behind me?"

Fry looked up from his crouch behind Amy, next to the table.

"Um, wanted to have a clear view of things". He fought to keep his voice from squeaking. "Help me, Amy. I don't know what's going on." He touched her on the elbow, but she flinched away.

"Hold him, Amy."

"What in the shi-ganga is going on here?"

"You know last night how Gary was coming over?"

"Yeah, how'd that go?"

"Ask Fry. He spent the whole night watching from my closet."

Amy swiveled around and stared at Fry, mouth open.

"What?!"

"I didn't do anything like that," squeaked Fry. "I mean it was close, but I was really, really glad it didn't happen-"

"But you have my holophoner. See it there in his hands, Amy? I got that from Zoidberg months ago, and kept it hidden in my closet. I didn't tell anyone. Funny, I was just about to get rid of it. "

Amy looked Fry up and down, as if trying to spot horns on his head.

"What's this about a baby?" Amy asked.

Leela was now standing a few feet away, facing Amy, breathing heavily. "Doesn't matter. Please help me or move out of the way."

Fry peeked over Amy's shoulder. "No Amy, she's not making sense. I didn't watch, Gary left-"

"What this about a baby?" Amy persisted.

A vein above Leela's eye throbbed, and she looked like she was contemplating just tossing Amy aside. Then she took a breath.

"You know Fry and I had a relationship. He told you, before you kissed him."

Now Amy was red, along with Leela. The Asian intern nodded mutely.

"Kissed?" Fry said. "When did I kiss Amy? I mean other than all of times on Mercury, in the closet over there, in the Alpha—um, I'm gonna be quiet now." He looked around. The nearest hiding place was gonna be the truck again. That or under the table.

The women didn't even seem to notice Fry. They were staring directly at each other.

"Fry got me pregnant. When I told him the baby was going to be—mutated, he ran off. After kissing you."

"No," Amy whimpered. "I mean, you had hinted that Fry had left you in a hard place, but I never thought—".

The two women stared at each other, as if having a staring contest. Then Amy burst into tears.

"Oh, Leela, I'm so ashamed I kissed Fry last year. I don't like to think about it. I'm so sorry for that, and everything I said about your eye." She struggled with herself for a moment, then said, "I'm just so jealous of you sometimes. Except for your fashion sense. There, I said it." She struggled to smile.

Caught off guard, Leela's expression relaxed, and she even smiled back a little shyly.

"It's OK, Amy. I mean, it did hurt, it hurt for a long time. But I don't hold it against you."

"Of course it hurt. But I'm happy, really happy, that you've got Gary now. I mean, other than-" she jerked her head back toward Fry "-it's sounds like it worked out OK last night?"

Leela shifted her eye from Amy to Fry, then back to Amy, then grinned.

"Last night was one of the most magical nights of my life. I learned I love him. He's a gentlemen, well-off, hasn't stabbed me in the back, and he has this troubled past—"

"Ohhhh, he's hinted that to me too," Amy said. "Sounds so romantically tragic-"

"-and very mysterious," finished Leela, turning her gaze back to Amy.

Both women sighed in unison, stared at each other, silently for a moment, then burst out giggling. Then, impulsively, Amy stepped forward and gave Leela a warm hug, leaving Fry standing, nonplussed, a few feet away.

"I'm mysterious," muttered Fry darkly, a lump forming in his throat. "Well, OK, maybe not. But my past is kinda sad too. I miss my dog and stuff…" The two women didn't notice him, and Fry could see Leela had her eye closed, smiling gently. He stared down at the floor, eyes swimming, half-expecting to see his own heart lying on the floor, along with the others being rooted out by Zoidberg.

Hel-lo? Fry's brain said. Her eye is closed? No one's watching you? Shouldn't you be running for your life?

Fry grunted, then sidled gently away from the pair, picking his way cautiously through the trash, toward the truck. As he ducked back through where the front windshield used to be, he cringed when he heard a loud and jovial "Hello! My good friend Fry!"

Zoidberg leaned against the hood of the truck. "Why are you going in there?"

Zoidberg. He always kept forgetting Zoidberg, Fry thought, as he hurried inside, trying to keep the holophoner from banging on the windshield frame.

Isolated bills were fluttering inside the cab, and the hole into the back of the truck was now Bender-sized. The bending unit was clearly visible inside the cab, frantically trying to cram fistfuls of dollars into his chest. He was starting to have trouble keeping his chest plate from bulging out.

"Bender!" hissed the delivery boy. "Bender, we gotta get outta here! Hurry up."

"I'm workin' at it! How about you grab a plunger and let's see how long it takes to cram a billion bucks up your ass," replied Bender, piqued.

"Leela says she doesn't remember last night. She just remembers me spying on her and this jerk Gary."

"Don't care."

"She's trying to get me and let the police in."

"She can't. Only the Professor can unlock that particular door. Why do you think I store my special contraband in here?"

"Oh yeah, I forgot. Hermes is gettin' the Professor."

Bender paused. "OK, I care about that."

"Over here, Leela." Amy said, just outside the cab.

"Look, wormburger," Bender said. "Go after the Professor. Keep him away from the door. You're mostly fat, but I'm pretty sure you have enough muscle to keep the old geezer pinned down-"

"But Hermes! He was Olympic Limbo champion-"

Something seized Fry by the collar of his jacket and dragged him out of the cab. He dropped the holophoner.

"Enough of this," Leela said.

But Fry was already wiggling out of the jacket, the extra can of Bachelor Chow knocking him on the head as he dropped to the ground. He grabbed the holophoner and began to run.

"Stop the Professor!" yelled Bender, exiting the truck, moving awkwardly and painfully. "I'm goin' to Hermes' office."

The entryway to the corridor was fifty feet away, and Fry made a beeline for it. He saw Amy moving in from the side to cut him off.

"Stop being so glambic, Fry—whoa!" The intern had stepped on an old pizza box and lost her footing, falling to the floor. But Fry heard a pair of big boots kicking trash out of the way behind him, closing in on him.

At that moment a small mound of trash shifted, exposing an unconscious Nibbler, chirping weakly. Fry glanced at Leela's pet briefly before speeding past, but he heard the boots pause.

"Oh Nibbler! You OK, sweetie?"

And now Fry was in the corridor, pounding past doors, climbing stairs, panting heavily, his heart hollow, completely confused about the past, and no idea what to make of the future.


	21. Part II, Chapter 14

As he exited the stairs and sighted the entryway to Farnsworth's lab, Fry thought he heard a faint echo of Leela's boots downstairs.

His heart protesting, he finally reached the double doors of the lab. Inwardly he groaned. He had always been on bad terms with these doors. The doors, apparently thinking the same thing, tried to shut on him as he entered, but only succeeded in seizing his foot. Fry managed to pull his foot out of the sneaker before the doors sealed shut completely, slicing the sneaker apart. Spinning around, he saw Hermes arguing with Farnsworth next to a lab bench, the Professor surrounded by some sort of protective force field.

"I won't say it again, Hermes! Leave me alone! I'm so close, so close, to figuring out what the ingredients of this Twinkie Bar are!"

"Professor!" Fry shouted. "They're coming! How do I lock this door?"

"HuWhaa? Fry, is that you? Shouldn't you be on a delivery?"

"He's been gone for a year, Professor," muttered Hermes. "He's gone mad!"

"Mad, eh?" said Farnsworth, a hint of familial pride in his voice. "Maybe he isn't such a moron after all." He frowned, "although in one of my experiments you did keep pressing the button to get the cookie, even after the tenth shock."

"Professor, the door! They're coming!"

"Hwhaa? Who's coming?"

Fry was out of breath, panting, could only say "Bad-"

"Bad?" Farnsworth said, then his fists clenched with feeble rage. "Wenstrom!"

By this time Hermes had walked up to Fry and grabbed him firmly by the arm.

"Common Fry. Don' make me itemize all the violations to company policy you've made over the past few minutes. Professor, we need you downstairs. Where's Bender?"

"Wenstrom!" spittled Farnsworth. "I knew he'd try to seize this lab one day!"

"Bender. In. Your. Office." panted Fry.

Hermes hesitated. He looked at the exhausted delivery boy, and then at the Professor ensconced safely within his protective force field. No way Fry would be able to touch or move him. And Bender in his office--

The bureaucrat efficiently chose the lesser of two evils and left Fry, running through the door, which cheerfully let him through.

"Attention, everyone!" bellowed the old man. Fry looked around the empty lab, puzzled.

"Wenstrom alert! Code fuchsia!"

All doors slammed shut, and then were covered moments later by an additional layer of dolomite panels. The lab benches glided smoothly across the floor and settled in front of the doors. What seemed like little dust devils seized notebooks, scraps of paper, sketches, and anything else that revealed a hint of Farnsworth's thoughts, and dropped them into a safe that rose up out of the floor. Test tubes and experimental apparatus sank into the tabletops, a sentient sponge inched its way across the blackboard, wiping it clean, and a vase with a sunflower in it plopped innocently down in the center of the room.

Fry looked around. The lab was bare, clean, and even a little homey, thanks to the sunflower. The safe was stowed back under the floor. Nothing interesting here, the room seemed to be saying. No sir. Pretty boring stuff going on here. Move along.

His instrument clenched in his hands, Fry advanced cautiously toward Farnsworth, sitting in his chair, sniffing the flower. He could see glints of the personal force field that surrounded his elderly descendant.

"Professor?"

"Huhwa? Fry? How'd you get in here? And aren't you supposed to be gone?"

"Professor, I didn't leave, somebody took me."

"Wenstrom? But why?" the Professor mused, then straightened up, worried. "Did he make you press any buttons to get a cookie?"

"Huh? No. I mean, I don't know who took me. I think they may have blanked my memory."

"Simple enough," said Farnsworth. "Memory removal is an old and boring technology, common in this galaxy. I even remember the CryptoZoological association reporting that certain lifeforms could clear memories as a defensive mechanism. I once almost made a doomsday device based on that very idea, but a lab accident wiped the design out of my mind."

"But something weirder is going on. Leela said that I—well, that I did something last night. But I was there and I don't remember that happening. Something completely different happened."

The Professor waved his hand in dismissal. "Oh, big whoop, as your

people used to say. You're a human, she's almost human. Humans are inefficient, unreliable, have terrible taste in music, and are completely useless at remembering things. In fact, human memory is so useless that it will completely forget things that did happen, and sometimes even remember things that never happened at all! Two witnesses to an event can remember completely different things and be absolutely sure they're one-hundred percent accurate. Even the witch-doctors you stupid-ages people called 'scientists' knew this. They called it the Rashomon effect."

"Rush Moon?"

"Rashomon."

Fry heard a faint pounding on the door, and heard a voice that under normal circumstances he would have been thrilled to hear.

"Professor! Let us in! It's Leela and Amy! Don't listen to Fry!"

"And Zoidberg! Don't forget Zoidberg!" warbled the good doctor through the door, cheerfully.

Fry turned back to Farnsworth.

"But Leela's remembering things that I really know didn't happen. And last night she was perfectly OK. It's almost like something happened in between—"

And then he knew another epifanny was coming. His mind was ringing with pain. Once again, the fog was clearing. But instead of the sea, he was beginning to glimpse the outlines of something large. And deep. He felt as if he were standing on the edge of a huge pit, leaning over, straining to see the bottom.

The pounding grew louder, as if someone were using something large to ram the door.

"They did it."

"Hmm?" the Professor said, fingering the flower.

"Professor, can they make fake memories in people, like they do in robots?"

"Impossible! Completely impossible! I mean robots, of course, we upgrade and alter their memories all the time. But implant memories in humans? Why building doomsday devices is infant's play, compared to that!"

"Um, why? I mean, they put commercials in our dreams, don't they?" Fry said, approaching another desk, thinking he could slide that against the doorway.

"Foolish stupid age cretin! In dreams, yes. Dropping hints into the subconscious is easy. But waking memories?"

"But you said memory wiping was easy---"

"Oh yes, building a spaceship is so much more easier than tearing one apart," growled the old man. "Any gorilla can wipe a memory, but the victim-I mean subject- will remember a blank hole in their recollection. They may fill that hole, but it will still be there. But you're talking about actually placing specific memories inside someone's head, so they don't notice their memory has been changed."

The desk growled at Fry, who decided to back away. Farnsworth scratched his chin.

"Look at all the problems you'd have to solve. First, you'd have to read someone's mind, and determine the memories that are already there. And not just the memories, but also all the connections to other memories. And establishing the emotional context would be even worse."

"Huh?" Fry said, distracted by the desk, which seemed to be following him. A couple of chairs wheeled over, curious.

"All memories are colored by emotion. To implant a memory that feels authentic, you'd have to implant the emotional subtext to it, which means you'd have to derive the fundamental motivations, fears, and desires of the subject. Basically you'd have to know the subject better than it knows itself."

The knocking had stopped on the door. Fry wasn't sure whether to be relieved or even more worried.

"So even if you could read someone's so-called mind completely, the precision required to implant a memory that won't be rejected or recognized as false, making the right emotional connections—"

Farnsworth paused. Fry, surrounded by furniture, decided to try to stand on the table next to Farnsworth.

"The only remote chance I see for making a memory implant hold is to make the memory unpleasant. The mind tends not to dwell on painful things in our past, and when it does it tends to remember the emotions of the moment, not the details. So even if the details of the implant strike the subject as a little off-key, it wouldn't linger on it."

He stroked the flower, losing himself in thought, while Fry only watched, alert for any further sounds, and watching the one chair that seemed a little too eager to brush against him.

"I would also probably try to restrict the implant to a narrow range of time, since the number of emotional and visual associations with a memory grow exponentially with the length of the memory. Hmmm, how to make a short memory unpleasant? It would have to be based on some subconscious dread, some deep-rooted fear in the subject-"

Fry's foot accidentally brushed against Farnsworth's forcefield, and was rewarded with a small shock.

"Hence the importance of mapping the subject's emotional makeup in the first place. So a short and painful memory is the easiest way."

Fry looked up. Had he heard something?

"Basically, you would want to create a day that someone would want to forget."

Something was clicking at the door.

"But even after all of that, you can't get it perfect," muttered the Professor, mulling over the challenge. "You'd have to implant and monitor the emotional response of the victim-I mean subject. And then adjust the details as necessary. But how to measure?"

Fry hopped off the desk, and tried to use the holophoner to shoo the rest of the furniture towards the door.

"Ah yes, of course—the delta brainwave. One could phase lock on the wave to navigate the memory, and monitor its modulation to check that the implanted memory is holding. Otherwise, you'd be lost in that mind without a map, just blundering around in the dark, only guessing at what to alter and unable to tell if you're succeeding."

A gap appeared in the dolomite doors, and some sort of tool appeared, forcing the opening wider.

Reeling from hunger, lack of sleep, but above all—fear—Fry tried to concentrate. Just as he thought he could see something moving at the bottom of the pit, the fog was moving in again. He leaned against a chair, which rubbed back against him.

"You think false memories can hold for just a day? Couldn't someone change someone's memories over a longer time?" He hesitated, not sure what he felt at that moment. "Like months?"

"Months!" Farnsworth snorted. He paused, then spoke more gently to his distant uncle. "Let me put it this way, my boy. If something were able to do that, we wouldn't even be having this conversation. Anything that could mold memories for months at a time--well, it would effectively control that entity's mind. Complete mind control-- the greatest weapon in the universe. For of what use is a doomsday device," he said forlornly, "if whoever possesses it is being controlled by something else? Something with that much technical skill could take over everything, and anyone who even suspected or talked about it would simply have their memories adjusted."

Head still pounding in pain, Fry had one last look at the pit and the scale of the forces he was up against. It was clearly hopeless. He needed to stop thinking about it. The fog came rolling in back again. Don't think about what you're up against. Just run.

But even as his familiar state of panic settled back in, he felt a small ember of hope. He hadn't done what everyone remembered him doing. He had been true to himself, no matter what the rest of existence thought.

"Professor, I need to get out of here. Is there a secret entrance to Planet Express or something?"

"There's always the front entrance," Amy said.

Fry jerked around and saw Leela and Amy standing in the broken doorway, Leela casually tapping a hydraulic crowbar against her thigh. Zoidberg was peeking around the edge of the door, delighted to be part of the group.

"Hello, friends!" Zoidberg said.


	22. Part II, Chapter 15

Bender staggered up the stairway, fighting a losing battle to keep his newfound wealth from dribbling out of his chest and onto the floor. With all the Nixon bills floating away from him, he looked a bit like a tree losing its leaves. As he reached the top of the stairs, he cautiously peered around the corner. Amy, Leela, and whatshislobsterface were huddled around the Professor's doorway. As he watched, the doors opened, and the group dashed in.

He heard a shout, and then a scream.

"Stop screaming, Fry!"

"Here, Leela, I think I can reach him from -Gwaah!"

There was a loud crash, and from the far end of the corridor, Hermes emerged from of his office, looking puzzled. However, the sounds from the laboratory quickly snagged his attention, and he waved his hand over the security keypad, locking his office, before hurrying down the hallway, back into the lab.

"Sweet Domodo of Komodo! What are you doin' wit' dat chair, Amy?"

"It's trying to bite me! Help, Hermes!"

Silently thankful he had decided not to take any coins from the truck, Bender quietly tip-footed past the jacked-open doorway, where he caught a brief glimpse of Fry dancing on Farnsworth's head. Bender spent a millisecond rechecking the image. No, Fry was dancing on a force field surrounding the professor, while Leela was trying to hook him with a crowbar.

As Bender snuck up to the entrance of Hermes' office, he mused over how fond he was of his pet. Fry was never boring, and also a reliable source of income, however small. Better yet, he would fall for the same practical jokes time and again. Sometimes twice in the same day. But the biggest benefit of hanging around Fry, Bender mused to himself, was that he could create a diversion and distraction like no other entity—just what a connoisseur in the art of larceny needed in a companion.

Bender glanced disdainfully at the electronic keypad next to the door- a SuzySecure 2801, batch 201B. Well, this lock might be one of the toughest locks around, physically, but he knew the 201B batch had self-esteem issues. Kinda like a certain one-eyed meatbag he knew, but he wasn't gonna mention names. After a few seconds of flirting and wooing, the lock gushed and let him in.

Hmm, Hermes had left the petty cash drawer open.

Something large fell over in Farnsworth's lab, along with something that sounded like Musical Chairs Death Match.

Bender peeked into the drawer. Well, looked like Planet Express _had_ been doing really well recently.

"Not the fermion foam! Again!" moaned Farnsworth faintly.

Ah, Hermes's computer. Just logged out, even. Good thing these meatbags sweated a lot. Cautiously opening his chest door a crack, Bender had to yank out a few million Nixonbucks before he could locate the moisture sensor. Usually he only needed this thing to check that some cheap dive bar hadn't watered down his drink, but it was also useful for figuring out what keys had just been tapped on a keyboard. Let's see, eight keys, only around 40,000 to 400,000 password possibilities. Hmm, this may take a few seconds-

Something stumbled into the hall, and the lab doors snapped shut in frustration. Yeah, those doors had some personality issues. They weren't well-adjusted like Bender. The robot walked to the doorway, persuaded it to open a crack, and peeked down the hall.

"Yo, Fry!"

Holophoner still miraculously in hand, Fry turned and saw Bender waving. You know, his pet seemed to get a new bruise every time he saw him these days…

Fry hurried down the hall and into the office just as the lab doors slid open again, revealing smoke. Farnsworth's voice cried, "Put out that fire, before it melts through the floor! No! No, not water, you cretin-"

The smoke changed color, and the doors slammed back together, cutting off Hermes' "Sweet Ambrosian of explos-", as if they were embarrassed to reveal what was going on inside.

"Gotta get outta here," gasped the exhausted delivery boy, as Bender quietly closed the office door. "Mind. I think they changed Leela's mind." He paused. "Amy's too. Maybe everyone's memory."

"Memory rewrite in humans? Huh, never knew that your head jelly could be reprogrammed," said Bender, fingers flying across the keyboard. Ah-ha! He had figured some variation of 'Dwight' would work. Stupid affectionate humans-

"Reprogrammed, yeah. Somebody's putting in memories that never happened. At least a days worth. And maybe longer. Much longer." And the delivery boy lapsed off into uncharacteristically thoughtful silence.

Bender wasn't paying much attention, since he had just broken into the financial records of Planet Express. Wow, PE had been doing _really_ well over the past year. The bending unit was outraged. Why wasn't he being paid more! Obviously, this gave him every right to transfer the funds from all the PE bank accounts to the 128 numbered accounts he kept stashed away in the Andromeda galaxy region, just for situations like this. So he did.

"So everything they remember about your leaving is wrong?"

"Yeah, and I told you, Leela doesn't remember us talking in her apartment last night. She remembers me being some kind of cheating sick pervert."

"I forget. Is that worse than being a loser lovesick moron?"

"Um, just a little. But if her memories were changed, then something really is out to get me, and it's around here. C'mon, we gotta get outta here before they let the cops--and maybe the memory remover thing--in. What should we do now, Bender?"

The robot scratched his chin.

"Well, I was kind of figurin' that we would kill as many humans as possible, then upload our personal data to my secure porn account just before they surround and destroy our bodies. We'll hang out with the ladies for a while, virtually speaking, then download back into a fresh robot chassis. They're being made with over 80% titanium now, with extra chest storage space."

"I can't do that," groaned Fry, before falling silent as a pair of boots ran down the hall. There was a sound of a hand tapping a keypad. Fry held his breath. The door didn't open, and the boots moved down the corridor, pausing momentarily to open other doorways in the hallway.

"Who cares about you?" continued Bender. "Although if somebody really can change meatbag memories—well, I'd like to meet them, maybe offer them a business proposition or two. Lot's of money could be made, there. Would make robbing and pillaging apartments a lot easier. OK, I'll come along. Now what?"

"I don't know. I wish we could just fly outta here."

"Maybe we could ship ourselves out?"

"That's a poor way to launch our escape," said Fry, staring absently at a picture of the Planet Express logo mounted on the wall, the Planet Express ship clearly visible in front of his eyes.

"Why don't you play that thing again? If it's so smart about something being out to get you, maybe it'll tell you what to do?"

Fry tapped his fingers on the holophoner. Why not? Hermes and everyone else seemed to be busy saving Farnsworth's lab, so he could probably risk the sound. After pausing to listen for any further footsteps down the hall, he carefully placed the chipped mouthpiece between his lips and gently blew. As if sensing his caution, the instrument released a narrow, sinuous stream of smoke that swirled and formed a very compact image, while a soft, yet urgent sequence of notes filled the air. Fry screwed up his eyes to try to make out the figures in the image, and then-

"_What are we going to do?" he cried, Leela still in his arms, talking to the group in the basement. He was worried. Leela should have been heavier._

_Behind him, he sensed a faint disturbance in the air as the portal to the hospital room collapsed. He glanced behind him just in time to see a dark tendril creep up the hospital bed, which had now turned blurry, as if it were out of focus. Then the image vanished in a puff of smoke._

_Morris and Munda, a teenage Leela, Farnsworth, Amy, Yancy, Seymour, Kif, and Bender all shuffled uncertainly, but synchronously, making a sound like a winter breeze wheezing through the bare branches of a tree. And why was Zapp here too?_

"_What are we going to do?"_

"_I know, I know," said Bender. We should kill as many humans as possible, then upload our personal data to my secure porn account-"_

"Hey! That was my idea," Bender interrupted. Fry gagged and coughed, breaking up the image in the smoke.

"Bender!"

"Well, he stole my idea."

"I think this is the past we're looking at. You can't steal from the past." And Fry caught his breath, tried to clear his mind again, flexed his fingers, put the holophoner to his mouth, and -

"_-kill all humans."_

_He had to smile, despite his fear. Good old Bender-_

_Something slid over the floor above their heads, inching toward the basement door._

"_Hurry. Anything. Any idea. Give it to me."_

_Farnsworth lifted up his hands. They were tied together with wire of different lengths._

"_Look at-" said Amy._

"_-that sexy, sexy, wire," finished Zapp._

_He frowned. This was it? And was Leela getting even lighter?_

_He stared at Farnsworth, who was absently trying to untangle his hands. And then he knew._

_He played a short, simple tune, a song of beginnings and hope. And the mist swirled and revealed the main hangar of Planet Express. Farnsworth was visible in the image, saying "And here's where I keep assorted lengths of wire."_

_His earliest memory of the Professor. Of Planet Express._

_Leela, still in her hospital gown, slumped further in his arms. But she was still breathing. Something was scraping at the basement door._

_Restless, the teenage Leela hopped from one foot to the other, pointing anxiously at the ever-widening image. What was she doing?_

_And then, behind the Professor's shoulder in the image, he saw the Planet Express ship. An intergalactic spaceship._

_Something started seeping through the timbers of the basement roof and dripping to the floor. A drop fell on Munda's tentacle, and suddenly her arm was gone. Munda opened her mouth to scream, but Morris clamped his hand over her mouth._

"_Focus," muttered Yancy nervously._

_He was very scared. But what remained of his family and friends were here. He had to try. He blew harder, moved his fingers faster, and the tune morphed into a march. The image of the Planet Express hangar expanded quickly, until it covered a wall of the basement._

"_Run," he said, breaking the tune, but he didn't have to give the group any encouragement. As one mind they rushed the now-shrinking image, Zapp in the lead, Morris and Amy carrying Munda. In moments they found themselves in the hangar. Fry turned around to look back at the dissipating view of the basement. Just before the vision vanished, the basement door blew open, and a something large and black shot out of the darkness and splattered over the basement floor. In an instant the basement was smothered in a squirming mess of tendrils. The tip of a tendril pushed through the image just as it collapsed, cutting off the tip and leaving it wiggling on the hangar floor. Everyone shrunk away from the little tip in fear._

_Fry looked around. He was standing where he had been standing during his first visit to Planet Express. The far corners of the building were fading, and next to the table there was a purple/black blur that resembled an oil painting that someone had tried to wipe with a wet cloth, but had ended up smearing instead. Had there once been someone there? He looked down. Leela, pale, was still in his arms. But she was very pale. Almost transparent._

_Amy, Munda, and someone else screamed. He looked around. Kif put his hand over his mouth to stop screaming and pointed._

_The tip seemed to have grown roots, and was growing like some sort of nightmarish plant. The "stalk" undulated back in forth in an almost hypnotic pattern, and if he really listened he could almost make out a chirping-_

_Something large moved against the external wall of the hangar._

"_Get on the ship," he yelled-_

Fry released his grip, choking for breath, and the smoke dissipated. He turned to Bender, but before he could speak, the robot held up a set of keys.

"How does it feel to be shown up by a stupid wind instrument?"

"Those the keys to the ship?-"

"Yep. Found them taped in the secret compartment under Hermes's desk. I guess after our last joyride a few years ago he wasn't taking any chances". He paused. "Hey, how did your get your job back anyway after that?"

"Long story. Maybe later. You had the keys all this time? Why didn't you tell me?"

"I took them because they were shiny and pretty. I didn't think they would actually be useful. So where we taking the ship?"

"Let's start with 'away'".

Bender wheedled the SusySecure into opening once again and peeked into the hall. It was deserted, except for a lone chair turning itself in circles in front of the lab doors. The robot and his pet carefully walked into the hall. Still silent, but what bothered Fry was that while the lab doors were open, no sounds were emerging from the lab.

Fry made a splat/squeak/splat/squeak sound as his bare foot alternated with his sneaker foot while walking toward the lab. He looked into the room. It was empty; also rather blackened, coated with a layer of black soot everywhere. The chair rolled up to Fry and he absently scratched its arm.

A faint voice floated from the end of the opposite end of the hall. "Let me go, you primitive chordate-"

With Bender struggling behind, Fry hurried to the far end of the hall and looked around the corner. He found himself staring into the elevator lobby, and caught a glimpse of Farnsworth and the rest of the PE crew in the elevator.

"You gotta open the door and let the police in, Professor," Hermes was saying.

"Wenstrom will not win! I will not let it happen," the old man hollered.

He was still encased in his spherical forcefield, but was now hoisted on the shoulders of Amy, Leela, and Hermes, who apparently had found some insulated pads to keep themselves from being protected from shocks. No one saw Fry before the door closed.

Bender reached Fry a few seconds later.

"Fire alarm," Bender said, and pulled the appropriate lever on the wall.

Fry was surprised that Farnsworth even had a fire alarm installed in the building, given how fires were a normal part of life in that place, but there it was-sirens flashing and screaming.

"There," Bender said, "that will keep us from using the elevators, but it will send them straight down to the hangar floor."

"Neat," said Fry, then paused. "But isn't that a bad thing? Won't they get to the spaceship first?"

"Hmm, now that you mention it-", Bender said, then spun around and waddled toward the stairwell as fast as he could.

"Take the keys," the robot said, swiveling his head toward Fry. "Get the ship ready."

Needing no encouragement, Fry seized the keys and half-ran, half-stumbled down the stairs.

He emerged into the harsh white lights of the main hangar, now mixed with flashing red lights from the sirens. Instead of being on the ground floor, he was on the conference level, an open-air steel balcony twenty feet wide, surrounded by a safety railing to keep people like Fry from falling to the main hangar floor. From this height Fry could stare into the cockpit of the Planet Express ship, and to his immediate right sat the round conference table. He had exited the stairwell too early—he normally never used the stairs, so he had been disoriented.

It's OK, he thought. Don't panic. An open stairwell was right in front of him; he could just drop two levels to the main hangar floor. As these thoughts sauntered through his mind, he slipped on a puddle of Slurm and fell. The ship's keys and the holophoner slid out of his hand and into a pile of trash.

OK, now it was time to panic.

He plunged into the garbage and tossed a sickening combination of diapers, Lowenbrau, and vacuum tubes aside, while straining to hear any sound of shouting over the deafening wail of the sirens. It was no use, someone could walk up to him right now and he wouldn't hear a thing…

He was tempted to look up to check, but he forced himself to stare at the ground, swirling his hands through the putrid stew, hoping for any glimpse of a glint of metal—

There.

He seized the keys, grabbed his holophoner, and stood up.

"Geez, Fry. We were trying to save time here," the robot shouted through the ear-splitting sirens.

Fry walked to the safety railing separating him from the open space in front of the ship, leaned over, and looked down to the hangar floor, towards Bender, who was standing next to the ship's gangway. The wave of debris created by the hovertruck's entry had piled up on the ground against the wall supporting the balconies where he was standing now. Bender trudged through the remaining scattered debris and reached the gangway stairs.

"Sorry-", Fry began, but as he started to descend down the open stairway next to the railing, his eyes caught a flash of red. His jacket was draped over a chair next to the conference table, just a few feet away.

He hesitated. He loved that jacket. He had lost everything else, but at least he could keep the jacket. He only needed a few seconds. He still had time. The impulse overwhelmed him.

"I'll be right there, Bender!"

Before the robot had a chance to respond, or his brain had a chance to stop him, he was kicking his way through the scattered trash to reach the round table. He took a moment to set down the holophoner and seize the jacket.

At that moment the sirens fell silent, and the enormous expanse of the hangar was eerily quiet for a few seconds. As he shoved one arm into the coat, Fry gradually picked up the muffled sounds of hundreds of uniformed officers outside the building, talking, directing traffic, and trying to break in to get him. He glanced toward the cockpit of the Planet Express ship, which sat slightly below eye level from where he was standing. He could now see Bender through the cockpit window, pointing toward him frantically--no, behind him.

Before his heart even had a chance to skip a beat, he whipped around. The doors to the lounge were open, and he saw Amy, Hermes, and Leela step onto the conference level, tottering under the bulk of Farnsworth and his forcefield bubble.

"I won't do it, I won't, I won't-" fussed the professor.

"C'mon professor, just open the door over 'dere-" Hermes began—

Then everyone stopped and stared at Fry.

Both sides were momentarily caught off guard. Fry then realized that this was the only level where something as bulky as Farnsworth's bubble could be carried to an outside access door. Even as he was thinking this, he was slipping his other arm through his jacket, and moving directly toward the safety railing separating him from the ship, ignoring the stairway. He reached the railing and looked down toward the hangar floor about 15 feet below him. The big debris pile was just below him. He heard Leela struggling to lower Farnsworth down to the ground, and without hesitating he leaped over the rail and landed, awkwardly, onto the pile, rolling down until he smacked the floor.

Winded but unhurt, he leaped up and ran as hard as he could for the gangway of the Planet Express ship. A holoimager mounted over the top of the ship's stairway swiveled to stare at him.

"Bender! Turn on the ship! Start pulling up the ramp!", he gasped to the small monitor as he reached the foot of the stairs.

He listened for the sound of boots behind him, breathing, a hand closing on his arm—but couldn't sense anything. For the first time in days he began to feel a bit of hope that he could escape the traps that had been laid so subtly for him. Without turning to check, he took the stairs three at a time, until a couple of seconds later he was at the top of the stairs, standing underneath the holoimager, dying of asphyxiation.

He risked a look back, and his hopes rose further when he saw that Leela had only just reached the rail. Apparently setting Farnsworth down had been a lot of trouble.

One leg over the rail, she looked across and down the twenty feet of space that separated her and Fry, realizing along with him that there was no way she could jump to the floor and reach the gangway before he sealed it off. Her face was a combination of frustration and worry. She glanced up at the cockpit, and whatever Bender was doing apparently didn't ease her mind.

Looking to his left, Fry saw the control panel for the stairway, recessed into the curved interior wall of the ship. Without hesitation he slapped the retraction button, and he felt his feet vibrating as the entire gangway began to lift upward into the ship's body. Leela's wrist-thingy could control the ramp, but somehow he remembered that the manual controls overrode any remote commands--

"Fry, wait!"

He wasn't expecting to hear Leela call out in such a pleading tone. He hadn't heard such a tone since—well since he had woken up in a dumpster at the start of this whole nightmare. He hesitated and looked back up at her, hand on the hatch controls. She was now leaning against the rail, one hand behind her back, looking almost plaintively at him.

"Fry, don't take the ship! You're clearly really upset about something, but if you steal the ship, you're going to get yourself killed."

"Why do you care?" he said, startled at the bitterness in his voice. "You hate me now."

"I admit, I'm really angry at you, disgusted even, but also really confused." Her one fist pressed against her head, as if she were trying to push a headache back into her skull. "Look, if you steal the ship, you know you won't get very far. You can barely fly her. You know that. They'll destroy the ship, killing you, and no one will know why you're acting this way. Period."

The external hatch began to slide shut.

"Listen' to her, mon, " Hermes said, moving up next to Leela, leaving Amy and Zoidberg to lean against Farnsworth's force field ball, pressing it against the wall next to the lounge doors.

"I didn't do anything to you, any of you!" Fry cried. "I didn't leave! I didn't do anything wrong! What you remember isn't right!"

Leela nodded. "I agree, something's not right. You need help."

The stairway had nearly retracted, but Fry still kept his hand on the controls, wavering.

Leaning heavily against Farnsworth's forcefield, Amy was looking at Leela with admiration, and Fry had to admit that Leela was showing great self-restraint, trying to talk down someone she thought was a crazy pervert.

Leela looked him straight in the eye, in mute appeal.

"Talk to us."

And after an internal struggle, she forced a taut smile.

The hatch was three-quarters closed, and all he could see of the hangar was Leela and part of Hermes.

Fry wanted to reverse the controls. He wanted to talk with her. He needed help. He had no idea what he was going to do. But somehow his gut wasn't cooperating. And a feeling of sadness blanketed him as he realized that he just didn't trust being around Leela anymore.

She was now the only thing he could see through the narrowing slot of the closing hatch, and he felt he was closing a door on the best part of his life.

"I'm really sorry, Leela," he said, lowering his arm by his side.

But before the hatch cut her off completely, Leela called out, "Then one more thing! Aren't you forgetting something?"

And she raised her arm that had been hidden behind her back, revealing the holophoner that Fry had left behind on the table.


	23. Part II, Chapter 16

Fry stared glumly at the holophoner in Leela's hand. After everything that had happened: sleeping in dumpsters, bribing Bender and Zoidberg, breaking into Leela's apartment, hiding in her closet, surviving a face-to-face confrontation with her, participating in a spectacular bank robbery, driving an armored hovertruck backwards across half of New New York, and playing a game of hide-and-seek through the Planet Express building—after all he had done to win back the holophoner and the memories it somehow unlocked in his mind--he was now going to lose it over a stupid whim.

Well, he thought, don't give yourself away. Don't show how much it means to you. Play it cool. Be like Captain Kirk. Or was it Picard that was better at bluffing? So may important questions in life…

"So it is important to you," Leela murmured, peering at the holophoner, brow furled. "I don't get it…"

How could she tell? Fry thought, just before he noticed his jaw had dropped away from his overbite and was swinging like mudflaps on a truck, his mouth gaping wider than an Omicronian quitting a protein-restricted diet. OK, that would probably be a give away.

His hand dropped to the ramp controls, and the hatch stopped closing. And after a moment, it started to rumble back open.

This was silly, he thought as the gangway began to slide back down to the floor. He wasn't about to risk his one chance of freedom, which he had sacrificed so much for, just to lose it over a musical instrument, was he?

And yet. The holophoner had helped him realize that he wasn't a deadbeat coward. It had warned him that something was after him and nosing around Leela, and it had basically screamed at him that the Planet Express ship was the key to escape. Plus, he was actually getting better at playing it. And behind this jumble of thoughts, like a gentle murmur of a brook that cut through the cacophony of a Beck concert, lay the memory of the night of his opera. He just couldn't turn his back on the past. Not when he seemed to have so little of it left.

"You want this, Fry, you'll have to talk with us for a bit." Leela said.

The hatchway opened completely, and the gangway hit the ground with a thud.

"Yeah, the hatch opens as well as closes," Bender snarked over the intercom. "What the hell is going on down there, monkey meat?"

Fry shuffled slowly down the stairs, staring up at Leela, Hermes, Amy, and Zoidberg, all leaning against the railing. He was a fool, he knew. Well, what else was new? Who knows, maybe he could---

Wait a moment. Zoidberg? Wasn't he supposed to be watching the Professor? And Amy too?

Fry flicked his eyes over to the lounge entrance, and saw that the forceball was no longer there. He heard a faint rustling and shifted his head slightly. Farnsworth was rolling across the garbage-strewn floor, inching slowly but steadily through the mess toward the railing overlooking the rest of the hangar.

Leela was following Fry's eyes, and glanced over her shoulder.

"Amy-the railing's too weak-"

"On it," the intern chirped, then promptly slipped and fell.

Was this deliberate? Was Leela trying to distract him, stall him? When had he become so mistrustful toward his friends? And why was he holding a can of Bachelor Chow in his hand?

The can had been sitting in his coat pocket since last night, when Bender had given it to him. Come to think of it, it had been a special occasion—Bender rarely gave him anything. For free.

But now, as was his habit, he had jammed his hands deep into his pockets while he had been slouching down the gangway. And while distracted by Farnsworth, he had pulled out the can.

Leela looked at Amy scrambling on the floor, lips pursed in disapproval.

"Zoidberg, why aren't you over with the Professor? Go help him, please."

Zoidberg didn't respond, fixated on the holophoner in Leela's hands.

"My good friend Leela! You've found my holophoner."

"What do you mean your holophoner?" both Leela and Fry bleated in unison.

"I found it in Fry's locker. Hermes let me keep it." And the alien tried to reach for the instrument, but was checked by Leela.

"It's not yours, Zoidberg. It's mine. Remember Elzar's? You gave it back to me in return for buying you dinner. The professor--"

Amy stopped struggling on the mess on the ground for a moment.

"You went on a date with Zoidberg?"

"No, I didn't-" Leela huffed in frustration, and then shoved the instrument into Zoidberg's claw. "Don't move. Hermes, keep an eye on him. I guess I'm gonna have to take care of the Professor-"

Hermes glowered suspiciously at the serene expression on Zoidberg's face as Leela pounded through the debris, positioning herself between the forceball and the railing.

"Gimme dat thing, you miserable crustacean!"

"Zoidberg, no!" blurted Fry. "Not yet." He started to wave his arms to distract the alien. Several feet away from Hermes, Leela dropped onto her back and raised her insulated boots. The forceball collided with her feet, shoving her body along the ground, but the young woman reached beyond her head and grabbed the base of the railing, giving her some leverage against the ball.

The unsettlingly shiny red dome of the good doctor's head leaned over the railing, and Zoidberg stared down at the delivery boy standing twenty feet below him. Then the Decapodian's eyes widened.

"What's this? What's this you're holding in your toes?"

"Huh?" Fry said. "You mean this can?" He held it up so Zoidberg could see the label, anything to keep him from moving toward Hermes. He heard Leela give an enormous grunt as she managed to use her legs to shove the forceball onto a different path. Toward the exterior entrance, currently covered by the blast door.

"Bachelor Chow! Sweet nectar of post-agricultural factory processing!" Zoidberg drooled, but then straightened up, skeptical. "But wait. Is the can dented?"

Fry, still standing halfway down the gangway, looked at the can.

"Yeah."

A high pitched squeal rent the air, followed by a wrenching warble. Some deep-buried survival instinct in Fry forced him to whip his hand away from the can, and for a fraction of a second he could see the famous Bachelor Chow logo spinning around, suspended in mid-air. Then there was a reddish blur, and the can kept spinning, but now one end was smashed open, and it was an empty can that finally surrendered to gravity and clanged onto the gangway.

Whipping around, Fry barely had time to see Zoidberg's back disappearing into the ship, trying to halt his momentum, while still smacking his mouthflaps from the heavenly snack. He wiped his empty claws over his mouth, like a chipmunk cleaning its face.

A couple of thoughts hit Fry at once, but he could only deal with one at a time. O.K., First: Who knew Zoidberg could move so fast! That was awesome! O.K., Second: what was it—something to do with empty claws. Empty claws? Why is that strange? What happened to the—

He heard a clatter on the hangar floor. Turning away from the hatch entrance, he saw the Bachelor Chow can bouncing down the gangway stairs, rolling along the floor, then colliding with the holophoner, which had just finished skidding across the floor towards the ship. While leaping over the railing, Zoidberg must have dropped the holophoner. It now sat, gleaming, thirty feet away from the delivery boy. For the second time this year, Zoidberg had sacrificed music for a free meal.

Time stopped. Fry felt he was moving through syrup. He could see Leela back on her feet, eye wide, staring from the railing down at Fry and the holophoner. She was twice as far away from the instrument as he was, not to mention a good twenty feet above the ground.

"What in Satan's name is going on here?"

The forceball had hit the exterior door, and had come to a halt. Dazed and dizzy, Farnsworth must have de-activated the forceball, because he was now standing, wavering and woozy, in front of the side entrance.

"Who sealed this door? It's not Xmas!! Who shut all the windows? I need my Vitamin D!"

He leaned forward and peered into the retinal scanner. The emergency lights snapped off, plunging the entire hangar into gloom for just a second. Then a shaft of sunlight cut through the murk, illuminating a small section of the floor. And then the shaft widened, as the second roof shutter slid open, revealing bright blue sky. In moments, the PE Building's defenses would be completely rolled back.

And there, half lying in the sunlight, half hidden in the darkness, sat the holophoner.

Fry and Leela stared at each other, frozen in silence, but the sound of the second roof shutter clicking back into its hideaway acted like a starting pistol, and before Fry even realized what he was doing, he was bounding down the rest of the gangway, leaping down the last three steps, and pounding toward the holophoner, all without remembering to breathe. He had to skid to slow down and stop next to the instrument. As he bent down to lift it up, out of the corner of his eyes he saw a pair of gray boots land on the same pile of debris he had landed on just minutes earlier.

Without hesitating he fled back toward the stairway, blood pounding in his ears. No, that wasn't blood, those were the sound of boots pounding on the pavement behind him. Her stride was so long that he seemed to take two steps for every one of hers. Why did the gangway suddenly seem so distant?

"NO!" he heard shouted, close to his ear, and he was tackled from behind, at the waist. He and Leela tumbled to the ground, their momentum sufficient to slide them all the way to the base of the gangway, scattering trash everywhere. Frantically trying to keep his grip on the holophoner, Fry despaired as the thin device slipped through his fingers and skidded a few inches away from his grasp, knocking against the very base of the gangway steps.

"This has gone on long enough," Leela said, flipping him onto his back. Another shutter finished opening, and a halo of sunlight sparkled around her hair. "You've already nearly wrecked my life. I'll be dammed if I'll let you wreck this ship and my job, too."

Up above both of them Fry could see the streamlined curve of the PE ship's hull, polished so cleanly that he could see his and her distorted reflections struggling in the green background. He felt detached, like he was watching two strangers fighting in a different reality. Not them. Not him and Leela. Reluctantly he turned away from the reflection to look at her face, but her expression made it hard to recognize her.

"So the ship means more to you than me, now? You really do hate me, don't you?" He didn't intend to sound petulant. He really didn't. But he was tired, so very tired, and frightened.

"I've tried, I've really tried, not to hate you, to loathe you," she growled, struggling to pin down his writhing body beneath her. "I've tried to give you the benefit of the doubt time and again, every step of the way. I told myself, 'Fry got me this job, he found my parents, stayed with me.-'" She finally managed to grip both of his shoulders and slam them against the ground.

"But you've changed, Fry! I don't know you anymore. Maybe I never did. I knew you were immature, but I never dreamed you would abandon a helpless baby, even if she were a mutant. Or hide in my closet and watch me—"

Her full weight was on his torso, and he flailed his arms to no avail. It was over, he had tried everything. And then a strange question burst out of his mouth.

"Why'd you go out with me, anyway?"

"I ask myself that question every day."

"No, really. For years you wouldn't even think about going on a date with me. Even when I wrote that whole opera thing, you only gave me a group dance lesson. I'm not complaining, but I really kinda want to know—what finally got you to sleep with me?"

"Stop screwing with my head, Fry. You should know, you were there."

Another roof shutter locked back into place, and the shadow of a police hovercar sidled across the hangar floor.

"I was? When? How did we start?"

And then, ever so slightly, Fry felt the pressure on his shoulders ease. He looked up in her eyes and saw bewilderment.

"I-I can't quite remember. I remember waking up in bed next to you—must've gotten drunk." She grimaced, as if in pain. "But I can't remember a hangover. I never quite figured it out. It hurts to think about—I'm so confused." She shuddered, and she lifted one arm to rub her forehead.

"Leela," he said gently. "I don't think we ever went out. Never kissed, never slept together, never broke up. I think it's all been put in your mind." He hesitated, torn between hope and caution, and gulped. "Little Eureka never exi-"

Suddenly he saw stars as his head crashed back against the floor. Through the ringing of his ears, he heard her voice reach a pitch he had never experienced before.

"You snake!" She was almost screaming now. "You're trying to trick me! You're lying! You've always lied! You once tricked me into marrying you, and you're trying to trick me now!" She slammed him again into the ground. "But I've got you! You've tripped up! You never found Eureka's medkit that I kept in my closest, did you? You were too busy oogling me and Gary! And what about the holomems I have of her birth? I guess I imagined all that out of thin air, huh?"

Good point, Fry thought woozily. Bender would have an answer. "Bender?" He gasped weakly. "Help…' He tried to look around and only saw Amy, frozen in place by the railing, still struck dumb.

"You weasel! You dirty owl! You coward! I hate you! Yes, I hate you!" She was relieved, a burden finally off her mind. "I'm tired of feeling guilty about it! I don't owe you anything! I've suffered enough-"

Over half of the ceiling shutters were now open, and Fry could now see Hermes in front of the large telecom panel, shouting to an image of Smitty-"The doors are opening! They're tryin' to take de ship! We have one, but de robot is still on de ship!"

"Get everyone face down on the floor—" Smitty was replying…

He didn't know her face, it was so twisted with rage. Maybe he never had really known her at all, either.

"Stop…moving!" she grunted, lifting his shoulders up and pounding him on the ground again. He looked up at their reflections again, but it was kind of funny--from his point of view it looked like the reflected Fry was lying right next to the reflected holophoner.

He shot out his arm past his head, groping, and felt his fingers touch a familiar mouthpiece. She must have moved him slightly when she had lifted and pounded him back down. He didn't have to think about what to do. There was only one spot on her body as fragile as her heart. He swung his wrist, swinging the bulb of the holophoner through the air until it hit her right in the center of her eye.

She gasped and involuntarily arched backwards, releasing his shoulders and covering her eye with her hands. Fry managed to wiggle a couple more inches, and his hand grasped the bottom step of the PE ship. He pulled hard, and his body slid out from between her legs.

With one hand she tried to grab him, but flailing wildly with one foot he managed to kick her in the stomach, and caught off guard, she rolled away. Wheezing, Fry scrambled up, holophoner in hand, and plunged forward up the gangway. Whatever he had been doing the past year, it hadn't been exercise.

"BENDER!" he screeched, "PULL UP THE –URK!"

Something had grasped him by the ankle, and he fell forward. This time, though, he had a deathgrip on the holophoner, and as he was flipped over onto his back again, he swung it again with all his might.

A hand grabbed his forearm, stopping him easily.

He had never thought much about Leela being a mutant. Frankly, he didn't care. But the sight of the red, bloodshot eye and tousled hair wiped away whatever restraint he might have felt and he swung at her with his last free arm. But it did no good, and he found both of this arms pinned together above his head, against the stairs.

"Stop it, Fry."

And he felt the wrist of her free hand moving toward his throat. With one last wild arcing of his back he managed to get his knee to hit her forearm, but it only hit a button her wristmygig. Apparently she had tuned the device to the ramp controls, because the gangway started to retract up into the belly of the PE ship, with Fry and Leela sprawled out diagonally on the stairs. Or maybe Bender had heard him and had activated the ramp.

"Leela, please. Don't-"

"I'm done talking, Fry. Tried that for too long. Enjoy prison."

And for the second time in two days, Fry felt Leela's free wrist rotate over this throat, sealing off his windpipe. At the very edge of his vision, he saw the blast door covering the side entrance start to open.

"Goodbye, Fry."


	24. Part II, Chapter 17

The gangway steps kept rising, and Fry could see his and Leela's reflections on the PE hull get larger and larger—

Then froze, as Leela tapped her chin against her thingmajing, freezing the gangway in place.

"No, Leela-" he tried to croak, but nothing came out. He was choking, panicking as the oxygen ran out in his brain, and his brain, never very good in crisis situations, ran around in circles in panic, consuming oxygen all the faster. He saw Leela turn her head toward the hangar entrance, crying "Don't shoot!" and somehow it all seemed very familiar, this panic, loss, and terror—

"_Don't shoot!"_

_Bender shot anyway, blasting away an undulating mass of tentacles that squirmed up the cliff path behind them. Fry looked behind his shoulder, just in time to see a final glimpse of the PE ship in the distance, a small speck engulfed by tentacles and eyes, before it disintegrated into a blur of green and red. And then there was nothing but rock and the ocean beyond._

_The ocean itself was a large flat, black, turbulent thing, featureless in the light cast by the night sky, stretching from horizon to horizon. Even a night sky like this, brilliant with dense conglomerates of stars blazing away everywhere you looked, and with two moons peeking above the horizon—even the light from a sky like this could only faintly illuminate the breakers he could see in the distance, far behind and below them. He didn't know where they were. He had taken his shrinking group of friends everywhere else in the PE ship, every continent, every planet that he had somehow retained as a passing memory. And these—things—had followed, swallowing up every continent, every planet, and gradually every friend. Finally, he, Bender, Amy, and Leela's comatose form were left behind in the PE ship, floating in limbo in something like deep space, and somehow he sensed there was one place left, a place he didn't really remember. And here they were. It was a different place than the others, so isolated that they had managed to flee all this way from the ship before they were discovered._

_Turning away from the PE ship, he mourned its loss as he had mourned the loss of every friend and relative that had been taken from him, even if he couldn't remember precisely who they had been. He was already struggling to retain the image of Amy's face before she had vanished, a short time ago. _

"_Bender, now they know where we are!"_

_The robot lit his cigar._

"_They know where you are anyway, because you keep panicking, and they can smell fear. And geez, Fry, couldn't you remember what Zubans are like? These have no taste."_

"_I never smoked them, so I don't know what they taste like," he replied, staring past Bender to their last desperate destination._

_They were on a path that clung to an enormous cliff that erupted from the sea like the blade of a dark obsidian sword, and were now so high above the ocean that the massive breakers crashing against its base appeared like faint traces of white. One arm held Leela's limp form across his back, hand holding the holophoner, while the other pressed against the cliff wall for balance. Six inches to the left of his left foot, nothing stood between him and the night sky. In another life part of him would have admired a particularly beautiful nebula, but he only glanced at it dully now, as he heard Bender shouting again. _

"_They're coming again, meatbag! I mean, is it really that hard to get you to stop thinkin'? Getting you started is hard enough."_

_Like untended ivy crawling up an ancient black wall, huge bushy black strands of Them squirmed up the cliffs, wiggled up the path after them. Bender fired his rocket launcher once more, blasting a huge gap in the path behind them, sending a large squirming ball of Them plunging back into the raging sea below._

"_Look, if you're gonna think, think up some more explosive shells-"_

_And then more were on the path, blocking the route ahead. Fry saw a small tendril worm its way down the path toward Bender, who was standing ten feet ahead. Before Fry could shout out a warning, Bender aimed the launcher toward the tip of the mess descending down on them, and pulled the trigger on his launcher. Nothing came out._

"_Ah, damn it Fry, You're going to make me do it, aren't you?"_

_Bender charged toward the pulsing mass about to drop down on them, while shoving down the antenna on his head and muttering, "Initiate self-destruct sequence…."_

"_You know, if this was really me," he said matter-of-factly, " I wouldn't ever blow myself up for some dumb meatbag. This is so out-of-character that the real me is gonna sue you for misrepresentation, once all this is over. But I guess that's just you-- you just remember the best in everybody. Moron." Something started to beep in his chest. "But I guess if I'm going to go, I'm gonna make sure as hell that I'm gonna be remembered, and not forgotten. Good luck with you and the eyeball, Fry. Hope she was worth it."_

_He saw the flash a moment before the blast wave nearly knocked him off the path. An entire side of the cliff bulged away into the night sky and rock, tendrils, and eyes plunged, scintillating in the twin moonlight down toward the sea. Bender was gone, and for a few moments, he and Leela were safe._

_He dropped to his knees, horrified. Even in his shock, though, he was careful to gently lean Leela against the wall. Bender. His best friend. Gone. And soon to be forgotten._

_Something rustled behind him on the path._

_He didn't care if they found him anymore. He was now angry. Angry wasn't the word—there was no word he knew that would cover what he was feeling. There was only one way to express the feeling. He put the holophoner to his lips and blew._

_An enormous chunk of rock smashed away the rest of the trail behind him, taking out several clumps of Them that were almost on him. He blew again, and began ripping the cliff apart, hurling the ancient stone down onto the nests of vines and eyes that were scaling the cliffs, slashing large gashes in the wall. He blew again, and the resulting sound shook the cliff to its roots, and it split in two, a chasm opening in front of him. Glancing down, he could see a red thread of lava welling up from the gap. Glancing right, he saw that a new route had formed on the side of the chasm, allowing him to climb straight up._

_He should be tired, carrying her weight on his back, but the sad truth was that she now had hardly any weight at all, and her skin had the luster of alabaster, if that was what you called that fancy white rock. He seemed to leap up from ledge to ledge, staring up to the chasm rim and the stars beyond, pausing only to blast fountains of lava up and onto the tendrils wending their way behind him._

_At last he reached the top, and stopped short. Apparently they were on an island. From where he stood, every direction he looked showed a few feet of flat rock, and then a sheer drop, the sea stretching off to a dim horizon. Standing on this narrow rock platform were two pylons. He paused and stared at the pylons. He didn't recognize them, but they looked familiar. One was covered with figures that he knew were the common Alien Alphabet, the other—it was some other set of symbols_

_There was a subtle shift in the dim light illuminating the pylons. He looked up into the sky, and as he watched the two moons seemed to swivel around, transforming into eyes as he watched. He looked quickly down._

_He could hear rustling on all sides of the pinnacle now, a sound like cockroaches scurrying over glass. He lowered Leela so she sat, slumped, back to one of the pylons, and swung around, planting his feet like a gunfighter. He blew the holophoner again and the oceans around the island began to boil as the lava welled up in a ring around the base._

_Something large and wet was coming, but to his surprise the first thing he saw was a small tendril, no longer or thicker than an earthworm, peeking through a small crack at the edge of the cliff. A small eyeball opened up at the end of the tendril and blinked. And then thousands of eyestalks welled up from the cracks, like worms fleeing a lawn after a rainstorm. He whipped the holophoner back and forth like a broom, brushing back the slimy carpet over the cliff's edge. But something was about to emerge over the side that wouldn't be moved so easily. Here it came now—_

_His eye caught something between his feet. A small tendril had managed to creep between his legs, reaching behind him._

_And then he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned around._

_Leela was now standing in front of the pylon. Or what had used to be Leela. She had been Changed. She held out her hand for the holophoner._

_It was all over. He had lost. Even as disbelief settled over his soul, he narrowed his eyes at Her. There was something about the way she had Changed that was important. You know, she looked a lot like-_

_He heard something large and heavy slide over the cliff edge._

_What was he feeling? Despair. She was gone for good. But there was also something in him, something he didn't know he had before. He blazed with defiance. They would never have him. Closing his eyes, he blew one loud, longing, lonely tone, arcing his instrument above his head. A large, jagged gash ripped across the sky, tracing the motion of the tip of his instrument. Stars began to sink from the sky, and from the torn gap dollops of golden light dropped down toward the surface. Out in the distance the first drops hit the ocean, and suddenly the distant horizon was covered with fiery waterspouts. The tear in the sky sagged open further, and golden light started splashing closer to the island. The ground began to tremble as the lava frothed up into huge jets into the sky. And above all the noise the musical tone kept reverberating, shaking all of creation._

_What had once been Leela swayed, and covered her ears. He felt the large thing behind him shift nervously._

_He finished blowing, but the tone would not die away. If anything, it was getting louder. Before anything could grab him, he threw the holophoner as hard as he could. It spun, end over end, silhouetted by the fiery tsunami that was now bearing down on them, and sailed past some large tendrils that tried to snatch it, but failed. He caught a few glints of the instrument as it plunged into the boiling sea, where nightmares were screaming in agony. And then it was gone, out of reach of anyone._

_The horizon had transformed into a massive wall of fire and foam, thundering toward the island. The moons dimmed and dropped into the sea. All of existence seemed to lurch on its side as columns of fire descended from the heavens and plunged into the sea. He turned around, determined, at the end, to finally face his tormentor eye-to-eye._

_It was not as scary as he had feared. An enormous eye on an eyestalk, resting on a nest of eyes, stared at him, unblinking. He stared back, squinting. He thought he could see something move, faintly, behind the pupil. He focused, and stared harder._

_And he was surprised._

_And then existence collaps-_

Fry slumped, unconscious, under her arm. For a moment her heart skipped a beat, scared that she had gone too far. She checked for his pulse, and found it. Sighing, she sat back on her haunches, and was startled by the sight of someone sneering at her just a few feet away. Even as she jerked her hands into a defensive pose, however, she saw that it was just her reflection on the PE hull, now staring blankly back as her, as if saying, _Who are you? _

_I don't know_, she replied silently to her image. _I don't feel like I'm me. _

Across the hangar, the blast door rumbled open, and a crowd of men in SWAT armor swarmed over the conference area. A few started to approach the railing. She allowed herself to close her eye, let out a long, ragged breath, and raised her arms in the air. Even with her eye closed, the image of her twisted reflection floated in front of her. _Who are you?_

She forced the thought from her mind, and focused on a fundamental fact.

At long last, it was all over.


	25. Interlude

_S_

_Stat_

_Static._


	26. Part II, Chapter 18

_Static on a TV screen. Then words:_

"_Congratulations! Your brain has just rebooted! When you wake up, you'll be hungry. Remember, only Thompson's Teeth gives you the mega-calcium you need to help that nerve re-mylenation. Thompson's Teeth. Helping you get a-head!"_

"_Note: you have been automatically subscribed to this dream service because our New New York EEG sensors have detected a sudden change in sentience. Occasionally we pass your EEG pattern to reliable third party dream vendors who may offer products of interest to you. If you do not wish to receive these dream offers, please think 'gorilla-ballerina-litter box-apple sauce'—three times in a row, now, to unsubscribe."_

_Then static once more._

_He sat in a small room crammed with DVDs and old pizza boxes, watching a small TV. The only light in the room was the amber glow of the screen, casting an unhealthy pallor on his blank, unblinking face…_

_A gentle tone reached his ears, fading away like a sunset over a desert…_

_He was standing outside a one-room house in the middle of the plain. Except it now looked like a desert…_

_He walked for what seemed to be days, but he had no sense of time…_

_He walked down what now seemed to be a street, but a street piled with rubble amidst what appeared to be an abandoned city…_

_He saw a building next to a river, and knew answers lay there…_

_Disappointed, expecting more, he climbed the stairs and saw a conference table. Here was where he needed to be, the end of all paths. He stood and tried to find meaning in the breeze, in the gray beams of light punching through the holes in the ceiling. And the silence was complete. No sound, no life, no hope…_

_And then he saw a glimmer in the rubble underneath one of the beams. For the first time, amidst all the grays and blacks around him, he saw something in color. It was a pipe with a bulb attached to the end of it._

_First the tone, then the tempo, then the tune…_

_And as wisps of white smoke whirled around the crouched figure, it stood up and he could see a cloud of purple billowing around the head. The figure turned around._

_And she opened her eye…_

He opened his eyes, and wanted to scratch himself in a place that needed some scratching, but froze as he found himself looking at his distorted reflection in the hull, and felt stairs pressing into his back.

He remembered. Another epifanny. This was really going to hurt.

_They tried to wipe away your mind, _he silently told the red-headed boy staring back, an uncharacteristically thoughtful look on his face . _I think they just wanted to erase your holophoner memories, but you fought it, you hid in your family memories, and so then they tried to erase my memories of Leela. _ Leela, the reason why he had fought so hard to remember the holophoner in the first place. Some of the greatest memories of his life clung around her smile when he played that instrument.

He heard some distant shouting and a strong murmur filling the hangar, but he couldn't tear himself away from his own reflection.

_They tried to take Leela, but you fought even harder, kept finding her again in the sad memories, the ones that are hard to forget. Joy fades, pain endures. They had to rip out entire chunks of my mind to find us, but I still kept her and kept hiding, deeper._

And finally, they had to destroy everything—Amy, Bender, every continent, every planet visited, his entire past. And even then, once they had finally found Leela, they still never found the holophoner. Somehow he had managed to sink it away into the dark recesses of his mind, as somehow… _Somehow you were able to wipe your own mind instead, leaving no trail to follow._

And then they must have given up, and left him alone. _Did they_ _ever try to put new memories in you? _ He thought to his reflection_. Must not of worked, if they did. And somehow, you were able to remember the holophoner again. And from the holophoner, you were able to remember Leela. And from Leela-you were able to remember… everything._

He felt ice in his stomach, along with the headache in his head. He had come close to being killed many times before; in fact, it was part of his daily job. He had even nearly had his "lower horn" chopped off to make some alien aphrodisiac.

And yet—there was something about having his personality erased, which made him feel all unnervy inside. To think he could look the same on the outside, but what made him him on the inside could be scraped away—there was something very cold, very personal, very terrifying about that. He was only slightly less weirded out by the thought that he had been able to reconstruct most of his memories and personality by simply remembering Leela. He hadn't understood how much of her had become a part of him, until now.

And who had done this? Impressions, images, were fading fast, like trying to recall a dream upon waking up. He had seen something behind the Eye. And he hadn't expected it. But it kept slipping away. But he still remembered the rage, the fury of those last moments--.

He blinked and risked moving his head a little, breaking away from his reflection, enough to see Leela crouched next to his waist, hands raised by her head, eye closed, hauntingly similar to the last image in his memory/dream…

_Did they mess with your mind too? Did they try to make you forget about me? You didn't try very hard, did you? _

The residual anger from his recovered memory settled onto her. He had let them destroy his mind rather than betray his memories of her. While she--

_You let them feed you whatever they wanted you to think. You let them twist your mind and who you were until only the ugly parts of you were left._

He couldn't put it into words, but he was more than disappointed. It was a little like when he had first learned what the true ingredient of Slurm was. How something you trusted, an anchor in your existence, could turn out to be neither trustworthy or constant.

_I always thought you were strong. Stronger than me. I thought you knew me. You should have had a little more faith in me._

He must have moved slightly, or perhaps his breathing altered slightly, because Leela frowned and started to open her eye.

Without thinking, he impulsively lifted his leg and shoved her, hard, in the chest.

Normally, Leela was as lithe as a cat, but brooding on her own thoughts, she had been caught off guard, and fell into a backwards somersault, vanishing over the end of the gangway. It was probably a good thing, since his foot felt like he had just kicked a wall.

"BENDER!" he croaked, suddenly aware of the silence that had fallen over the entire hanger. "RAMP!" He sat up and got on his haunches, scrambling toward the edge of the ramp to check that Leela was OK. He had only a moment to see dozens of masked helmets turn his way, before he was distracted by Leela, who was hanging by one hand from the edge of the ramp, twelve feet above the hangar floor. She was already beginning to swing her body, preparing to flip back onto the ramp.

His anger was already fading. He just wasn't built for sustained hatred. Took too much energy. And he couldn't be mad at her, especially if she had been changed. Both last night, and just now, she had tried to look past the fake feelings implanted inside her, and had tried to talk with him, to understand what was happening. Who knows, maybe if they had just had a little more time…

The first laser beam flickered past his head, ruining the perfect polish of the hull above him. At the same moment, the gangway began to retract back up again. Bender must have heard him. Fry and Leela stared at each other, and he saw her eye widen as she realized what he was going to do a moment before he did. Both seemed to realize that from now on, there was no turning back.

"I love you, Leela," he said.

He probably could have chosen a better time to say that.

Then he jammed his foot down on her hand as hard as he could, looking askance as he did it. Maybe if he didn't look while doing it, she wouldn't hate him so much?

He couldn't close his ears though. He had not anticipated the adrenaline rushing through his muscles, and he had stamped much harder than he had intended. How could such a little bone make such a big noise when it broke? He heard a little gasp of pain, and then she was falling, grasping her broken fingers, flailing as her ankle hit the ground at a bad angle. He saw the boot twist a little more than an ankle should, and she fell on her back, hitting her head hard.

Snatching the holophoner from the gangway, Fry ducked down just in time as the gangway retracted completely, then ducked out of the hatchway just as a flurry of laser beams pockmarked the opposite wall of the entry room. The hatch slammed shut, and the sound of the weaponry impacting the hull was muted, sounding like a gentle rain hitting the roof of a house.

He didn't feel safe at all. He felt sick. Three feet of polygraphatic hull between him and Leela felt no safer than tissue paper. He wouldn't feel safe until he was parsecs away. He kinda doubted he'd feel safe ever again. But at the same time, he hoped she was OK.

A few moments later he burst onto the bridge, looking for Bender, but stopped short as the co-pilot's chair swiveled around, revealing a mysterious, unfamiliar figure.

"Wh-who are you?" he stammered, breathless.

"Scruffy. Scruffy the janitor," the stranger said, sounding bored. He dropped his eyes down to the latest edition of "Gears Gone Wild".

"Geez, Fry, do I have to draw a map for you?"

Fry whirled around and saw Bender pimpwalk onto the bridge, obviously in a great mood.

"The cash is stowed away, and boy do I feel several tons lighter," the robot mused. "Actually, I guess I really am several tons lighter-"

"Bender, who's this guy?"

Bender appraised Scruffy, scratching his chin suspiciously. Then he lit up.

"A hostage. We were only able to take $2.3 billion out of the $2.7, and maybe I can use this guy to make up some of my loss."

"We can't take—aw nuts. Let's just get outta here."

"What's the rush, meatbag? This is one of the safest places on the planet here," said the robot, casually making an obscene gesture to the SWAT team clustered around the conference table, firing over the guard railing at the ship's windshield. "I've locked everything down." He waved at Amy and Hermes, huddled face down on the conference level deck outside. And there was Nibbler, huddled under the table. Huh, the little guy must be feeling better. The last time he had seen him was just after he had crashed the hovertruck into the building a little while ago, and Nibbler had been barely conscious.

"Leela-"

"-can bite my shiny, metal a-"

But now Fry spotted Leela through the windshield. She had limped up the stairwell to the conference level, ignoring the laser shots flying around her. Barely sparing a glance over her shoulder at the PE ship, she had reached a ladder mounted on the hanger wall, and had just started to climb up toward a mobile crane mounted on the roof.

"Heh, heh, heh, what's she trying ta do, lift us up?" chortled the bending unit, leaning back into a convenient chair, and pulling out a Zuban, reserved especially for just a chortling occasion like this.

Fry didn't fell nearly as sanguine, and watched his former captain painfully pull herself up the rungs toward the crane.

Bender dropped the Zuban to the floor. Fry turned, and saw and his friend's eyes telescope out. Fry followed his gaze.

Dangling from the crane was a chain that slacked down onto the conference room floor. Somehow, when they hadn't been looking, Leela had attached the end of the chain to something.

Nibbler's litter box.

Leela was a very tidy person, Fry knew, but somehow it still seemed a little strange that she was picking this time to clean Nibbler's litter box, with all the laser fire going on and all. He also would have thought that sweeping up the mess on the floor and moving the hovertruck out of the kitchenette would have been higher priorities. Still, he didn't know much about cleaning house, and she really did care for the little guy…

Milliseconds later Bender grabbed Fry by the lapels of his well-worn red jacket.

While(STATUS==PANIC)

{

.speakln("FlyFry");

}

"FlyFryFlyFryFlyFryFly…"

"Wha—I thought we were OK here!"

"The space rat craps out dark matter! That stuff can break through anything! Even this windshield!"

"You mean-Nibbler's gonna throw his poop at us?"

Bender groaned. "Dammit, organ bank. The crane lifts the poop, then she runs it into us. We can't fly with a big hole in our side." Fry stared blankly at him. "Look, do I hafta draw a picture for ya?!"

Thirty seconds later Fry looked up from a bunch of sketches etched on a few dirty napkins, and the back page of _Gears gone Wild._

"Look Bender—she's lifted up the litter box and it's moving toward us! Just like in this picture here! That means that she's gonna-" he looked at the next sketch in the sequence, paled, and tried to grab Bender by the lapels, before realizing he didn't have any. "Let's get outta here!"

"I forget," Bender said, "how do ya start this thing?"

The robot fell over as Fry slapped down a large red button, and the engines roared to life, sending a large shudder down the vessel before the inertial dampers could respond.

OK, that was simple enough, thought Fry. It had helped that the button had had a large label "START ENGINES" right above it. But now what? He'd done this a few times before. Grab the control stick, then pull back…

Dozens of figures dashed for cover as the PE Ship lifted vertically off the ground under perfect control, then smashed into the hangar roof, and then fell to the floor with a resounding crash.

Dazed, Fry lifted himself off the bridge floor.

"Heh, yeah. Forgot to open the hangar roof hatches."

"Damn," said Bender, "the Professor must have really strengthened those things since our last joyride."

The bridge door slid open and Zoidberg wandered in, owl feathers drifting away from his mouth.

"My good friends Fry, Bender, and Scruffy! Are we about to leave on a great adventure? Oh look! Leela is coming too!"

The new PE crew could see the crane and the roof structure groan under the strain as the little litter box, suspended just an inch off the ground, glided closer to them.

"OK, Fry," Bender said, "open the doors and let's get outta here."

"Um, Bender, where's the button to open them?"

The two friends looked at each other blankly for a moment, then started frantically pressing every button or switch that looked remotely practical.

"Hey janitor hostage guy, do you know—"

"Scruffy knows that one switch for the roof hatches is outside, right there by the wall by the cops—"

Oh no, thought Fry, we're trapped. And the little bundle of dark matter had now glided past the conference table, straining down against the groaning gantry, making a beeline for the PE cabin.

Then Fry realized there was another ship system he knew by heart. Seconds later, he was scrambling up the entryway into the gunnery chamber. He jammed the chamber swivel controls hard to the right, and the gun began to rotate horizontally as he adjusted the gun barrel elevation to point to the roof.

He glanced through a window and found he had a clear view of the roof crane trundling toward the ship. His eye accidentally met Leela's, and even though they were fifty feet away, he could see her eye flick toward the ceiling, then the gun, and then widen.

The first shot from the laser cannon ricocheted from the hangar roof and took out part of the wall to the offices and Farnsworth's lab. The roof doors hadn't opened, but they now looked like Fry did after a night on the town with Bender. Fry had faith. He knew Farnsworth was much more enthusiastic about offensive weapon systems than Xmas defenses.

The second blast flipped the two ton doors into the vivid blue sky, where they twirled in the air gracefully, looking like large gray butterflies. Then they knocked a few police hovercraft out of the air and crashed down into the streets flanking the building, crushing empty police cars in a way that butterflies don't.

The remainder of the roof was no longer stable, and the section above the mobile crane could no longer bear the several ton pull of the dark matter. Hands pressed white against the gunnery window, Fry watched as Leela leapt out of the crane, just before the entire thing detached from the roof, plunging to the floor, the litter box slightly clipping the PE ship's nose on its way through the floor. The ship shook as the remainder of the roof crashed down around them, burying the floor in debris a few feet thick, and jetting plumes of dust and metal flakes into the air, blurring out his view of the outside world. He strained, but couldn't see Leela, or anyone else. He desperately hoped she was OK.

As he started to climb back down into the hull, Fry thought he caught a glimpse of Nibbler, clinging to one of the beams on the walls. It must have been his imagining, because it looked like the little guy was waving at him, trying to get his attention.

The ship began to vibrate as the engines activated once again. Fry slid/stumbled back onto the bridge as Bender jerked the control rod back, and the PE ship drunkenly ascended through the roof, knocking away the last stray bits of the roof structure.

"Ah, pleasant memories of stealing the ship," sighed Bender.

Memories, all right, thought Fry. The laser cannon and kinetic projectile weapons bombarding their tail from the surrounding street were eerily reminiscent of the first time he had flown in this ship on Jan. 1, 3000.

Bender let go of the control rod to adjust his cigar. Fry dashed forward to grab the rod and keep the ship from lurching.

The PE ship was now nearly vertical, dashing through the atmospheric layers like a dog finally released from a leash.

"Doofus DOOP ships coming in from the side," Bender murmured, unworried. The PE ship was the most overpowered ship in the quadrant.

They punched through the Van Allen belts, and then the lesser known Van Halen belts, recently named in honor of the famous rock musician/amateur astronomer.

"What now, fatsack?"

"Yes," said Zoidberg, "the universe is your oyster!"

Scruffy turned the page of his magazine to stare at the centerfold, scratching his nose.

Fry stared blankly for a moment, then smiled. He saw, then pressed, the warp button.

"I think I'm gonna take a shower."

And then they were gone.


	27. Part II, Chapter 19

"And they blew off the roof!?"

"Yeah, I barely got out of the crane in time. Luckily I was able to grab a wall beam with my hand, and avoid being buried alive. Quite a few policemen weren't so lucky. Fortunately, looks like no one was killed."

"What's so funny?"

Leela hadn't realized she was grinning.

"I was just thinking both Fry and Bender must not have noticed the roof hatch controls, clearly marked as a dipswitch in the fuse panel underneath the console. So they probably panicked and blew everything up. Pretty typical of them."

"I can't believe you're smiling," Gary said. "They almost killed you! And they took hostages!"

"No, not really. Just Zoidberg." Leela stared down at her coffee mug, currently containing a dose of caffeine that would have been illegal on Earth just a few centuries ago. She could see herself smile in the coffee's reflection, which reminded her of her strange experience with another reflection earlier that day.

_Why am I smiling?_

"And look at you! I can't believe you're going to try and travel like this."

"I heal really quickly. I can already walk on my ankle." She waved her splinted fingers in the air. "This will take another week or so. The whole thing will probably be over by then anyway. Besides, I like to have the reminder," she said, grimly, staring at the splint the medics had placed on her.

"One week! That quickly! Then you know where they are?"

Leela didn't answer, but surreptitiously looked around the Cygnoidian pizza joint. The PE building sat across the street in the dark, still surrounding by a pack of flashing red lights. In less than an hour she and Amy were planning to leave the planet in a desperate attempt to get the PE ship back and save Planet Express. She had arranged this quick meeting with Gary in the most isolated spot on the street, the best she could do before she had to leave. But she didn't want to say too much. She saw an Amphibonian hastily look away, and several other aliens and humans glance away a little too casually. There was a lot of money in play here, and a lot of people were coming out to play.

"No," she said, lying. "But they're not going to get very far. I mean, true, Fry, Bender, and Zoidberg together might add up to almost one brain." She tamped down the surge of guilt she felt for saying that out loud. "Also, they've had a lot of practice in running for their lives." She shook her head. "But the space around the solar system is really heavily patrolled, and if they tried to blend into the traffic on Sqrt(66) they'll be stopped at the new checkpoints."

"I heard the Nimbus is being called in too," Gary said. "With Zapp Brannigan on top of this, you should be getting your ship back pretty quickly."

"Er, yes," she said, stirring her coffee more vigorously than usual. Some secrets she was not quite ready to share. "His lieutenant, Kif Kroker, is pretty competent."

"Well," Gary said gently, "I hope you come back soon." He took a bite of the Cygnoid's pizza. "Mmm.. not bad. They must have gotten some new toppings in today…"

"Me too. And thank you for offering to feed Nibbler when I'm gone. I was so worried about him this afternoon, being knocked out like that. You may find him a bit of a handful—he's been trying to sneak out all afternoon."

"Don't worry, we'll be fine. I really like animals." And he flashed a grin at her.

She smiled, felt a little part of her defenses melt inside, and looked down to sip at her coffee. There she was, staring back at her, puzzled, just like earlier today.

"Gary?"

"Hmm?"

"Do you ever feel—have this feeling, that you're not acting like yourself?"

"I've done some things at Blernsball games that I don't really like to remember."

She hesitated, but his green eyes looked at her, patient, curious, kind. At that moment she felt like she could tell him anything.

"This afternoon we had to pick new names when we registered for our – travel. I picked Lola. And I've felt funny ever since. Actually, I've been feeling strange for days, ever since Fry-".

She watched her reflection in the coffee as she mentioned his name. She saw her eye flash, her lisp curl into a sneer and felt an intense wave of hatred swell inside of her—and then suddenly vanish without a trace.

_Do I want to hurt him? Yes. But he also needs help. Mental help. Do I want to hurt him or help him? Maybe both?_

"I mean, just today I started shrieking. Shrieking! Completely losing it—completely out of control! I've only done that once in my life before." A brief memory of her hooded parents standing by a wall flickered into her mind, then faded. "I never do that. I never act that way. And for a moment I felt like I wasn't myself. Like I'm not the Leela I used to be."

She kept looking down at the table, reluctant to meet his eyes. "Also, I've found myself being nasty lately to people, especially Fry. Really nasty, even cruel. So when I picked the name, I found myself wondering. Maybe it's right that my name is Lola now. Because I don't really feel like I'm Leela."

She had said too much, voicing these vague dreads. He was going to run away. She stared at her reflection in the coffee, too nervous to look up.

"What I hear is someone tired beyond endurance, injured, angry, and about to do something really stupid." he said. "And from hints you've dropped, you've had every reason to be angry with this ex-boyfriend Spry of yours."

"Fry."

"Whatever." He leaned forward, worry written over his face. "Sleep here one more night. Stay with me just one more night, then head out first thing in the morning. I don't like you going like this with—your friend—"

"Amy."

"Yeah, Amy. Worst thing to do is to do when you space travel is to be tired. That space lag is a killer."

"That's really sweet, Gary," she smiled, authentically, at him. "That means a lot to me. In fact, somehow, just talking about it makes me feel a lot better. I have to go." She stood up and extracted what looked like a small pin from her wrist thingmagig.

"Here, you can reach me on this encrypted link if something serious comes up with Nibbler. Or if you're just thinking of me." She tilted her head coquettishly and leaned over to whisper, trying not to be overheard. "Don't send too many though—I don't want anyone tracking me!"

There was a long kiss—_did we kiss last night? I don't remember_, she thought.

"Stay," he said.

"Sorry. But I promise you," she said, running her finger along his jaw, "it'll be worth the wait."

Her watched her walk into the dark street, and stared after her for a long time, seemingly oblivious to the five other patrons who quietly paid up and slipped out.

*********************************************

Professor Hubert Farnsworth was working in what remained of his lab, the gentle breeze floating through the missing wall only seeming to stimulate him and push him harder. He had lost so much time today, with all those bothersome law enforcement officials and press scum asking him the same thing, over and over again. He had finally dumped everything on Hermes, who had only now just left, exhausted, yet thrilled at the mountain of paperwork this was going to lead too.

He should be asleep too, this late at night, but Farnsworth was excited. He had had this memory of talking with Fry, ridiculous of course, since the dear boy had vanished a long time ago—but what an interesting talk they had had! Implanted memories with their associated emotions! The more he had worked it around in his head, the less impossible it seemed. Why, just now he realized that if he used liquid hydrogen instead of liquid helium, he could get the superconducting SQUIDS to work with that much higher resolution, and he might be able to work on individual neurons. Read them—and change them. There was the small matter of a test subject, but –

A knock on the door jerked him out of his reverie. Farnsworth turned around and saw a young Neptunian standing in the doorway.

"Erah yesssss?"

"I'm sorry, are you Professor Farnsworth?"

"Yesss?"

"We have something to you need to see."

Farnsworth was not suspicious. The nature of his experiments required the delivery of all sorts of –unusual—materials that the delivery services generally preferred to send at odd hours. The alien body parts in particular also seemed to arrive late at night, up the back stairs.

The device the young alien and his companions were assembling did not look like it had any alien body parts, although an unsophisticated mind might think the little probe dangling from the mass of wires might look like an eye on the end of an eyestalk. One of the figures, a yarn creature, nodded to the Neptunian and his companions, who nodded back and left the room.

Farnsworth frowned, glancing from the parts on his table to the device standing in front of him. It looked like a lot of his parts were in this machine.

"Who are you imbeciles? I'm working, can't you see?"

The yarn alien leaned forward, strands relaxed in sympathy. It emitted a series of soothing notes, accompanied by a translation from a badge posted on its chest.

"We're sorry, Professor, this will take just a moment. We're an ambulance crew. The NNY health agency sent us by to do a checkup on all holdup victims today—just to make sure you're still mentally fit after the experience. Just look here."

As Farnsworth turned to look at the small probe the Neptunian was pointing to, something beeped on the alien's chest. He thought he heard the phrase "personality bifurcation?" emerge from the badge on the yarn creatures test.

"Please, Professor, we must hurry. Please look this way—"

Farnsworth swept his eyes toward the probe and

_Prof. Hubert Farnsworth slept slumped in his hoverchair in his laboratory. He had been working on his latest doomsday device, but he had dozed off while reviewing the quantum field equations in his head, and had begun dreaming of younger times with Mom. He dreamt of mottled flesh and creaky joints, of a mix of solder and sweat, as a gentle breeze tickled his nose…_

END PART II…

**The Intergalactic Panel of Fanfic Ratings requires an intermission to be placed 2/3 of the way in a long fanfiction. Please feel free to take a break, photosynthesize, or blog, before continuing….  
**  
_And on a more personal note, thanks to all the people who've commented on and read this story so far. From the story statistics feature on this site I figure that there are about twenty of you who have been consistently reading the entire story. Thank you for sticking with such a long narrative._

I have a confession to make. I wrote much of this story about a year ago, posted on PEEL and Futurama madhouse, then had to take a long break in real life. In the interim I've been posting here, and written a bit of Part III, the final part. Thus the updates will be a bit slower than in the past, since I've just about caught up to where I'm writing.

If you've been reading up to this point, would you consider posting a review to let me know what's working and what's not?

Regards,  
Just Nibblin


	28. Part III, Chapter 1

**WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!**

**The Intergalactic Panel of Fanfic Ratings has determined that the time between updates of the following story has exceeded 10% of the median lifespan of a weighted mixture of fanfic reader species. We express our apologies to recently deceased readers from Mayfly VI.**

**All authors that wish to resume a fiction after exceeding this update time are required to submit a form PU-5487z-A providing background information to readers who may have forgotten key details of the story, thus relieving them of need of reading story again.**

**FORM PU-5487z-A**

**Story title: ****Rush Moon**

**Estimated reading time for Parts I and II**

** Robot (sober): 1.5 microseconds**

** Robot (Bending Unit, drunk): 5.6 microseconds**

** Average carbon-based life form: 30 minutes**

** Homo sapiens: 2.5 hours**

**Cast of Characters:**

**Philip J. Fry**

**Turanga Leela**

**Bender Rodriguez**

**Amy Wong**

**John Zoidberg**

**Hubert Farnsworth**

**Timeline of plot:**

**Between the end of the TV series and before BBS.**

**Plot summary to date (200 words max):**

**Fry wakes up in a dumpster, stumbles into Planet Express, and learns he has been missing for one year, with no memory of the past year. At Leela's insistence he is then fired from Planet Express. Confused and alone, Fry has dreams that suggest he should find his holophoner for answers, leading him to try to break into Leela's apartment. There he learns of the existence of Leela's new boyfriend, Gary, and of the terrible things Fry has done to Leela that fanned her hatred of him. Fry refuses to believe what Leela accuses him of having done, and gets suspicious that something strange is going on. The good news is that Fry, for once, is right—there is something strange going on. The bad news is that what is really going on is really, really bad. He has currently barely escaped Earth on the PE Ship with Bender, Zoidberg, Scruffy, and 2.7 billion in cash taken from an accidental bank robbery (don't ask, read the story!). Bounty hunters from across the universe are arriving to hunt them down, including their newest members, Leela and Amy, with undercover names Lola and Faye.**

**Study questions for Oprahbot Binary Book Club:**

**(1) What happened to the second holophoner, Fry's gift to Leela?**

**(2) Is Eureka real or not? If she is not, why are there IV tubes and a holomem in her closet?**

**(3) Why did the bald man at the bank help Fry and Bender escape, and why did he secretly tuck a wallet with pictures into Fry's pocket? Why is it puzzling that he would he be puzzled by Fry's puzzlement?**

**(4) Why is Gary so gosh darn likable?**

**(5) Why is the holophoner important? What would the Earthican psychoanalyst Freud interpret the holophoner as looking like?**

**(6) What did Fry see in his dreams that surprised him, when he finally faced down the Them?**

**END FORM PU-5487z-A**

**RUSH MOON**

**Part III--Run, Lola, Run!**

Leela strode into the Planet Express building through the gaping hole that had, at least this morning, once been the main entrance to Planet Express. She flashed her Planet Express ID at Smitty, who had been guarding the entrance, restricting entry. She hadn't even known Planet Express had IDs until Hermes had hastily passed them out this afternoon to allow them access past the police force fields. Apparently past employee turnover (i.e. deaths) had traditionally been so high that Hermes had never bothered handing them out to the crew.

Funny, Smitty had barely glanced at her, but had stared ahead- as if in a daze- as he flicked off the barrier in front of the hole_. Well, he isn't much in the brains department_, _is he? _Still, it was funny how he hadn't even turned his head to look at her walk in--

"Faye, have the packages arrived yet?"

Amy, who had been hunched in front of a large computer bank, jerked back, startled, as Leela barged onto the conference balcony. Mounds of debris had been hastily brushed to the side, clearing a rough path across the floor. Faintly, from the open hole that led into the Professor's laboratory, the piped voice of Linda the TV anchorwoman settled over the hangar, which was completely dark except for the ring of light surrounding Amy.

"Gleesh, Leela! You asked ten minutes ago, and the answer is still no!"

"Faye, call me Lola now. We need to practice using our new names so we don't accidentally give away our true names in the field. OK-- Faye?"

"Fine, Lo-la. The answer is still no. But I've got everything else loaded into the Beta Romeo. Even that heavy package that the Professor gave you, which you really should've done yourself. I mean, I broke a nail shoving that thing in the trunk. What is that thing anyway? And where were you?"

Linda's voice droned away:

"_To recap our top story, there is still no trace of the two bold criminals who robbed the First Apple Bank this morning, stealing over $2 billion in cash from Mom's Friendly Robot Corp's payroll. After fleeing to a small delivery service company, the thieves, Philip J Fry and Bender B Rodriguez, destroyed much of the building and hijacked a ship, taking themselves and possibly some hostages to whereabouts unknown. At present there are numerous injuries, but unfortunately- erm, I mean, fortunately- no deaths. Let's report live now from Taco Bellvue Hospital, where the Mayor's aide Chaz Smythe III, Jr. has just been confirmed as being not dead yet." _

"I said a quick goodbye to Gary," Leela replied, hoping Amy wouldn't follow up on the Professor's package.

For a moment Leela didn't recognize the expression that appeared on Amy's face. It was so familiar though. Why? Then she realized she had seen that same expression in a mirror many times. Usually when Fry or Bender had been around. It was a "you-mean-I-was-working-my-hindquarters-off-and-you've-been-doing-WHAT?" expression that didn't which fit the casual slacker attitude that characterized all things Amy Wong.

"_Linda, this is Norris the Neutral, reporting from a building called the Bellvue Hospital. I have been told that the human Chaz Smythe will not die, but I have not seen the entity myself. I have seen no evidence to suggest otherwise, but I have seen no evidence to suggest he is alive either, other than this statement from a human I do not know-"_

"_Thank you Norris-"_

"You've been partying with Gary all this time?"

Feeling somewhat sheepish, Leela found herself saying, "Well, he is taking care of Nibbler for me, so I had to settle all that-"

"Um-huh." The intern grunted in a way that all male mammals within parsecs would have found cute, but somehow managed to raise Leela's hackles instead. _I almost prefer when she was being awkward around me, when she knew that she had kissed Fry behind my back--_

A slight headache at that moment stopped any comeback Leela might have been able to summon, and as she rubbed her temple Amy continued.

"I haven't even been able to raise Kiffie, even though the Nimbus should be in our Solar System by now."

_Well that explains part of it—she's looking forward to maybe seeing Kif during our little bounty hunt. I sure hope not, because were there's Kif there's-_

"Zapp Brannigan."

Leela gave a little start as Linda's voice wafted the name of her second greatest-mistake across the hangar.

"_The multiply-decorated DOOP hero is currently heading here to patrol all starways heading out of the Earthican system. And he's not alone. Bounty hunters from across the galaxy are converging into the Earthican system, already leading to a jump in sales of alcohol, weaponry, and souvenir Hardly-Davidson t-shirts, extra-extra large. No comment yet from MomCorp, either about the robbery or the mysterious reward anonymously offered for the live capture of the fugitives. "_

Not for the first time today, Leela suddenly felt disconnected from herself. She used to hate Zapp Brannigan more than anyone else in the Universe. But now he had a competitor. Someone she never would have imagined just a couple of years ago. Philip J. Fry, her enemy?

Even as she thought the words a wave of anger flooded her feelings and she reflexively clenched her fists and clamped down her jaw. Amy, misinterpreting these signs, hurriedly said, "I've been killing a little time looking at the Guild website-"

Leela turned to stare at images of grim-looking individuals filled the PE computer screens as exploded views of spacecraft and weaponry rotated in the background. Wait a moment—wasn't that Morbo up there?

"Anything interesting? Besides Morbo?"

"Some of these bounty hunters seem really nasty," Amy replied. "I'm starting to get a little worried that we're going to scratch my car." She glanced anxiously over the balcony railing toward her Beta Romeo, squatting in the middle of a PE Ship-shaped crater of debris in the middle of the hangar, like a nervous gerbil trying not to be noticed by circling hawks. "I'm thinking of asking my parents for their Bugallac instead. At least it has a gun mounted next to the cruise control."

"No time. We're just waiting for our taguns, and then we're off. If we leave soon, we might be able to avoid all these clowns--your little car is pretty unobtrusive. And if we find the PE ship right away, we may not even have to fire the gauss gun I've brought along."

"And how are we gonna do that? Find Fry and Bender, I mean? They could be anywhere in the galaxy by now!"

A smug little smile settled over Leela's face, a look that had always annoyed the intern to no end. For one thing, that look always led to a LookHowSmartIAmEvenThoughINeverWentToMarsU lecture.

"Because we know something everyone else doesn't. The fuel tank of the PE ship was almost empty when they took off. I hadn't cleaned out Nibbler's litter box into the main engine yet. So our little pirates had to hide somewhere in the Solar System, and the only place to get dark matter off-world is along the Sqrt(66) starway leading out of the system."

"Starway sqrt(66)? That's where Kiffie told me he's going to be patrolling! He also said they're putting up spaceblocks along the spaceway. So we're just going to wait by there?"

"No. With the engines you have in that thing"-she nodded toward Amy's car-"we'd be lucky to even get onto the starway before the DOOP scoops them up . No, we have to find where they are huddling down around good old Sol, before someone else-".

"Hey, anybody in there?"

The familiar voice crackled over the console's speakerphone. Smitty was calling from outside. _Guess he wasn't so dazed after all_.

Amy glanced at Leela, who nodded. The intern gently prodded her thimble-sized device with her perfectly trimmed fingernail.

"Yeah?"

"There a Faye or Lola Valentine in there? Some clowns from the Bounty Hunter's Guild is here with a package for them."

_Funny how we now need a delivery service to deliver to our delivery service,_ Leela mused, as she opened the only functioning doorway to the outside and signed for the package. The harried looking courier strode past an oddly-parked ambulance and vanished into the sea of flashing red lights, no doubt delivering similar packages throughout the sector this evening. No time to lose.

She opened the package while jogging up the stairs and dropped the Guild Taggers on the console in front of Amy.

"Wow! Who knew bounty hunter scum had such good taste?"

Amy had a point, Leela thought. The small Taggers had a streamlined, elegant look about them that made her feel underdressed in her standard white T-shirt. As both women admired the forms, one of the devices projected an acoustic hologram, a squat, round squishy ball with a squat, round head and two marshmallow-like stubs for legs. "**Hi, I'm your friendly bounty hunter FAQ, introducing you to the exciting and tax-sheltering world of the bounty hunt. Please touch device with appendage to confirm identity."**

Glancing at each other, the two women both shrugged, and Leela pressed the purple device, Amy the pink. A second hologram appeared, and two identical figures began to speak, slightly out of synch.

"**Identity of Lola/Faye confirmed, Guild license #039487+89078i and 8876478+847861j**."

"Complex identity," Amy whispered.

"Shhh."

The FAQ bubbled away adorably. "**Your registration has been confirmed with the Guild and your hunting privileges activated. Taggers activated. Communicate intended target**."

"Bender B. Rodriguez and Philip J. Fry," Leela said confidently, although she felt momentarily dizzy as she spoke the words. Shaking her head to clear it, she refocused on the ghostly voice.

"-**confirmed. Bounty for this target is currently set to NONLETHAL. Please attach tagger to front of chosen weapon**."

_Currently_? thought Leela, as she slid the tagger over her favorite laser pistol, and as Amy awkwardly slid hers over the Bureaucrat4096 gun Hermes had hastily loaned her. ("Slices through the paperwork like butta," he had assured her). _Currently_? A hint of coldness started to congeal in her stomach.

"**Weapons adjusted to stun. Calibration in progress. Please shoot at a random target**."

Leela aimed at the hovertruck still lying forlornly on its side twenty meters behind her. Along with the red aiming mark a new green mark appeared, slightly offset, but as both women watched, the spots merged.

Closing her eye for a moment, Leela had a vision of a filthy, ragged Fry reaching out and touching her boot.

"_It was in your closet. Last night."_

_He said it so casually, that stupid confused expression he always wore-_

She pulled the trigger, and a wisp of smoke appeared on the side of the vehicle. Simultaneously a small "pop" emerged from the tagging sleeve, and a fraction of a second later a dart smacked and stuck to the side of the truck.

"**Shot confirmed. No ID established by tag. Please shoot at a nonessential portion of your anatomy**_."_

Pausing only a moment, she aimed for her injured foot, giving no time for Amy to snark. She felt a slight sting as a mosquito-sized dart embedded into her shin.

"**Shot confirmed. Hit confirmed, time 22:31:40.6567 Universal Galactic Standard Time. Identify match: Lola. Not on hunter list. Calibration complete. Hit target only with tagged weapon during active search**_."_

"So that's how they log who gets the bounty first, huh?" Amy said. "Kinda like a credit card. Geezlesh, I never thought about it, but I guess in the middle of a big firefight giving credit for a capture would be kinda hard, huh?"

"Yeah," Leela replied, "it's probably a pretty common situation. Not much left behind for a disintegrator to confirm. Umm, FAQ?" she asked the hologram, uncertainly.

The FAQ, which had been lifting a virtual leg and dropping crapware onto the PE console, snapped back into a pleasant, eager expression of interest. "**Hmm**?"

"Is there a tagging device for our ship's weapons system?"

"**FAQ#3: Validity of earning bounty through destruction of transport vehicle. Since 2843 the Guild has required all bounties to be collected directly by entity. In 2841 a bounty for its Royal Highness Shulgan 1024 of Binno V was claimed after claimant destroyed escape pod from the target's flagship. However, one Earthican cycle later target was discovered singing karaoke in a mud pond on FleshPot IX, causing awkwardness between Guild and long-term client. Thus all bounties must be marked using personal entity weapon, providing absolute proof of target."**

"Wow," said Amy, "so we're gonna have to board the ship and tag them directly? Kinda old-fashioned, don't ya think?"

"Yep," Leela replied, "and you know, I kinda like their approach". Amy stared at Leela, catching a gleam in the martial arts expert's eye. "No easy way out. No lazy shooting from a distance. The hunter has to look the hunted in the face before making the catch. I could get used to this."

Amy had never imagined Leela as anything other than a starship captain with terrible fashion sense. But now, looking at Leela smile down at her tagger, she couldn't help but wonder whether her captain had stumbled into a career better suited for her.

Leela felt a shiver of excitement run down her spine, as she always did when facing a new and likely insurmountable challenge. And yet—

And yet something was dulling the edge of her concentration. She felt as if she were bathing in both ice and a hot tub at the same time. She could hear her pulse racing, her body quivering in anticipation of action, but the cold feeling in her gut now also crept up her spine. She was feeling afraid. For herself? No, that wasn't it. For Bender? That must have been it, but it was only a nonlethal bounty, and fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view), Bender had proven himself nearly indestructible many times in the past—must be that 40% dolomite shell.

Was it fear for Fry? But she despised him! And it was simply a "stun", not a "kill."

So why did the prospect of shooting down her former friend with a dart elicit a faint hiccup of horror?

As Leela wandered through her thoughts, Amy watched the tag disintegrate from her friend's singed boot, wishing again that Leela had better color sense—as a team, they simply did not color coordinate. Finally, the cyclops stirred and turned to the computer console bank. "Well, if we have to find them in person, all the more reason to find them quickly."

"And where are they, if not along Sqrt(66)?," Amy asked. " Even the Earthican system is pretty big. I remember my sorority Sol crawl taking days. Missed my quantum engine mechanics final. My grade stayed superimposed."

Lecturer Leela emerged full-blown again, as she tapped the computer console, projecting an image of the local solar system.

"Let's eliminate locations-" she began---

"-it can't be Earth itself, because the tachyon residual from the Planet Express Ship indicated an actual jump took place," Walt murmured, waving his hand and causing a red patch to cover Earth on the image floating in front of Mom, Ignar, and Larry. "But the magnitude of the residual was weak—they haven't gone outside the solar system."

"I like Earth," Ignar smiled. "It's pretty blue."

"Shut up, you idiots. Both of you," snarled Mom, before taking a long pull on her cigarette. "This is the best you can do?"

"Not quite, Mother. Our subsidiaries have been able to cross off Mercury, Venus, and Mars—"

"-leaving the rest of the system to hide in," she growled. "With my hard-earned cash. Which someone else is going to grab before me, because someone else doesn't have morons for sons."

"I thought you would be happy that someone else is offering a reward to get the money back", Larry said, cautiously. "Now you don't have to."

Both Walt and Mom rolled their eyes to the ceiling, an action that Fry would have found familiar, had he been in the room. But he wasn't.

"Yeah, this anonymous benefactor is asking for those two morons on the ship, but has said nothing about giving back the money," she hissed. "I'm sure a bounty hunter is just going to let the money sit there, while he ties up the thieves, right, sonny boy?" Larry shrunk down and stared at the floor. "In fact, I'm sure these anonymous angels are waiting for the money to fall into their laps right now," she said. "Unless we find that ship first. Who knows, we might even pick up an extra 2 million Woolong on top of our 2 billion investment. That is," she continued, eyes flashing toward Walt, " if my so-called offspring can manage to be slightly less retarded than those retards on the ship."

Walt smiled tightly. "As I was saying, Mother, we've crossed off the inner planets, which leaves—"

"-the gas giants, Oort cloud, and asteroid belt," the Neutral bounty hunter said to the assorted alien species gathered around the display, as their vessel slipped into its berth on the Moon. "They could try to hide in the upper atmosphere of the gas giant-""

"-squishy humans? Too much gravity. No way," the hunter from Omnicron V grunted dismissively.

"At first glance that is a very reasonable point of view", the Neutral nodded, "and cannot be discounted completely. However, they may have a gravity pump, however unlikely. But for the time being, without being disrespectful to that possibility, let's focus our attention on regions where a ship can hide among the clutter of the asteroid belt or places like it-"

"So how do you pick a tadpole out of a swamp?" the Amphibios hunter asked---

"Well, boss, we ken look at de usual suspec's—warp signature, heat signature, difference in albedo—"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm really impressed wid' what you know, Mousepad," said Donbot, reclining back in his seat in the Robot Mafia's best car. "If I had a degree ta offer, I'd shove it down your yap-yap right now. So how we gonna find dese clowns in de asteroids or de comets?"

"And give 'em de clamps!" Clampbot added cheerfully. "Why don' we ask dis guy, boss, do the robopsycholegy thing? Dat's why you hired him to come wid us, right?"

All three heads swiveled toward the bending unit smoking casually on the far end of the vehicle. Pulling his cigar out of his mouth, the fourth robot said, "Well, I know Bender has wanted to kill all humans for quite some time, kinda as a hobby. I know the feeling. Now that he's free to do so, he probably going to try to find the mythical League of Robots in order to raise an army to destroy Earth. And make some more dough in the processes." He stubbed out his cigar calmly, apparently oblivious to the 60 Hz confusion that suddenly hummed throughout the car.

"Nah, just pulling your leg," Flexo continued. "You guys are all right. But you know, I worked on that ship once, and it had one of the biggest dark matter engines I'd ever seen. For its size, the ship should have a pretty strong gravitational signature-"

"--so if the ship is really hiding in the middle of a bunch of same-size objects, the only possibility left, then it's relatively strong gravitational field is going to affect the orbits and motions of everything around it."

Zapp Brannigan-- Captain Extraordinaire, Hero of the DOOP Fleet, Conqueror of Invalid XII, Splash Photo Cover for EarthSquire Magazine--picked his nose, made a manly wipe underneath the arm of his chair, then looked confused. Lieutenant Kif Kroker repressed a sigh.

"Stop speaking this prissy scientific nonsense, Kif. Give it to me straight, like a manly punch. Just not too hard, please."

Kif glanced at the main viewscreen of the Nimbus, watching the starway traffic of Sqrt(66) swarm by in the distance, and swallowed another emerging sigh. "The ship's inertial mass is different than its gravitational mass, so the movements of nearby objects are going to be strange. If we link into the DOOP near-Earth defense scanning system and monitor the Doppler shifts of all moving objects in the asteroids, outer planets, and Oort cloud, we should be able to flag unusual orbits or rotations—"

"You punch like a woman, Kif. Give it to me in terms a man of action like me will understand. What's this inertial mass you're talking about?"

Kif pondered, then closed his eyes in despair, while forcing out the words.

"Big boobies shake more slowly."

"Ahhhh," Zapp said, leaning back, nodding sagely behind tented fingers. "So if the cleavage is heaving the wrong way, we know she has implants-"


	29. Part III, Chapter 2

"—and the PE ship will be in the region of the mismatched Doppler radiation," Leela concluded, primly. She always took a little pride (OK, lots) when she showed off her basic physics knowledge to the engineering intern. She had always been fond of Doppler effects since grade school. Any technique that could let you estimate velocity using only one sensor, she was all for.

"We just have to sit here and monitor the near-Earth defense data until we find it. Good thing you hacked into it so easily."

"Well, actually, Kiffie gave me a guest account, so I could download his PASCAL poems to me," she said. "He sometimes likes to rename stars after me in the DOOP star charts too."

"How sweet," Leela said, straining as much insincerity out of her voice as she could manage.

Oblivious, Amy continued, "but it's strange. I think there are a lot of other users in this database. I think they're actually hacking in too. Hey, there's Kiffie's username! He and the other users are looking at the same data we are. Guess we're not the only ones thinking of this," she said in a manner that would do a Neutral proud, while secretly enjoying the rare sight of Leela the Lecturer deflating somewhat.

"Drat," Leela said, eye scanning the screen. "At least there seem to be only five others. Now we know who the competition will be." Her eye lingered on a particular column on the display. "Hey, Amy—"

"Faye---"

"Whatever the hell you are—is this column how much time they've been logged on?"

"Yeah—looks like a couple of users have been on for a couple of hours. Let's see—they've even managed to scan the asteroid database twice."

Leela swatted away the small voice of despair, and focused. She loved competing. It had been too long. "OK, someone has more resources than us. But if they're scanning twice it means they haven't found anything. What else have these guys looked at?"

"Hmm… someone else has scanned the Oort cloud three times."

Fry and Bender would have asked the computer for help to hide, Leela thought, and the computer would have given them a list of possibilities, all cluttered areas of the solar system. Which one would Fry choose?

And then an image popped into Leela's mind, unbidden.

_He looked down, disappointed to a degree that surprised her. After all, it was only the Moon._

_And then she saw the reflection off his helmet, and she turned and saw the Earth, as if for the first time-_

The memory suddenly blurred, and then

_---"She's going to die if you go. Do you understand that?"_

_He put his chin down on his chest for a moment._

"_O.K."_

_And then he was gone._

That latter memory was sharp and dominant, but she still retained the fading impression of Fry's face the first time he saw the Earth rise over the moon's landscape. Funny how your memories of the same person could feel so—so _different_.

"We're all looking in the wrong place," Leela said. "We're thinking like people from the 31st century, not someone from the Stupid Ages. I know where Fry would go, if the computer gave him a set of choices."

"Where?"

But Leela was already adjusting the display to magnify the sixth planet of the solar system. The rings of Saturn stood out clearly, looking as solid as a knife blade, but (as even the Stupid Age people might have known) was actually composed of millions of clumps of ice particles, most the size of the PE ship.

Without a word, Amy executed the Doppler analysis.

"Faye, that faint discoloration over—"

"Got it, Lo-la." Moments later, the anomaly filled the screen.

"Saturn's rings?" Amy said. "That's not much of a cover. I mean, the Oort cloud is, like, millions of times bigger. Wouldn't it be smarter to hide there?"

"Who are we talking about, Faye?"

"Oh, yeah."

"Anyway," Leela mused, "I suppose it might look beautiful to someone from the Stupid Ages, if you didn't know that it's just a bunch of ice, and a bunch of methane farms for fast-food freezies." _What a simpleton. A cowardly, perverted, simpleton. What had she ever seen in him, _- she unconsciously clenched her lips.

Even as the anger seeped its way back into her feelings, she still felt a wistful pang of regret. He was probably there right now, staring at Saturn's rings, thinking it was one of the niftiest things he had ever seen—

_________

* * *

It was one of the niftiest things he had ever seen, even niftier than the psychically-controlled console for the Playstation XXX, even better than the Virtual Drinking Game Bender had shown him a few years ago. Clumps of frozen ice and methane floated past the window, and the PE ship had drifted just far enough above the orbital plane of the rings for Fry to watch the individual clumps blend into a continuous blur out in the distance. Planet Express rarely delivered in the Solar System, and never here. He could watch it forever. When the computer, prodded by Bender, had mutely listed a set of possible hideouts, Fry had no hesitation in picking Saturn over that dumb-sounding Hoot Cloud.

Reluctantly, he pulled his gaze away from the window and back to the holophoner. He was sitting on the bridge of the PE Ship, alone. Bender, Zoidberg, and Scruffy ("Scruffy. The janitor.") were somewhere else, probably in the galley, where Bender was diligently trying to figure out if Scruffy had any money on him.

A shower and a few hours of sleep had done wonders for him. The shock and despair that had blanketed his mind during the past few days had receded to the fringes of his consciousness, sniffing for a way back in. But his successful escape, his realization that he wasn't crazy, and the beauty of their hideout--all combined to seal out his fears, and the rusty cogs in his brain were actually struggling to move. He felt more cheerful, even hopeful, even though the computer didn't quite seem to be working properly, and couldn't speak or otherwise explain why they had had to stop somewhere in the Solar System. That was fine with Fry. He wanted time to explore his memories again.

So, for the fifth time today, he tried to focus his concentration and blew into the holophoner again—

_The horizon had transformed into a massive wall of fire and foam, thundering toward the island. The moons dimmed and dropped into the sea. All of existence seemed to lurch on its side as columns of fire descended from the heavens and plunged into the sea. He turned around, determined, at the end, to finally face his tormentor eye-to-eye._

_It was not as scary as he had feared. An enormous eye on an eyestalk, resting on a nest of eyes, stared at him, unblinking. He stared back, squinting. He thought he could see something move, faintly, behind the pupil. He focused, and stared harder._

_He could see the reflections of the pylons and the Changed Leela in its eye, but something else suddenly moved, inside the eye. He could almost make it out-_

And the vision dissolved into smoke, while Fry shook his cramped hand. Nothing. Nothing! He couldn't get past that point, couldn't understand what had surprised him so much when he looked into the eye of Them.

He had experienced this memory so many times that he had become desensitized to the terror and panic he had felt at first. Kinda like how Star Wars started losing some of its punch after the twelfth viewing in a row.

The added sense of detachment had allowed him to observe more details of his final memory, to watch the background behind the tragedy unfolding in the forefront of his memory. Yet, all these reruns left him more confused than ever. For example, that black island, and the strange pylons on top. It was so familiar, yet he had never seen it…

"That Scruffy meatbag has no wallet," grumbled Bender, as he sauntered through the doorway. "No ID, nothin'. I thought you coffin-stuffers needed all these cards and cash to function."

"Bender," Fry said, staring absently out the window, lost in thought. Which would have unnerved Bender (had he had nerves), because, while he was used to Fry staring blankly without thought, he had never seen him lost _in_ thought before.

Shrugging, the bending unit _extraordinaire _began unpacking more cash from his torso and stuffing it under the PE ship couch. He had spent hours unpacking the $2.6 billion dollars so he could be a bit more mobile. He had originally planned to drop the cash in the cargo bay, but like magpies and pirates from times immemorial, he had found it difficult to separate himself from the cash. Thus the couch was now looking more like a very expensive beanbag.

"Bender," Fry said again, watching his friend at work, while an odd feeling crept over him, "how do you find the center of the universe?"

"I look in a mirror."

"No, really. Have we ever gone to the center of the universe?"

"You mean the end of the Universe? Where we saw the cowboy universe?"

"No, the _Center_ of the Universe."

"Why the hell do you care?"

"I don't know. I just feel like it's important."

"OK, I'm bored now," said Bender, pulling out a stopwatch. "Oh look, fastest time yet I've gotten bored around you! A new record! I gotta add this to my scrapbook. Why don't you ask your stupid questions to the computer while I write this down?"

"Its speech thingie is broken, you said."

"Oh yeah, forgot to tell you, I fixed it. Found the loose paper clip Amy had used for a fuse."

Fry looked at the computer console on the wall by the entrance to the bridge. "Computer?"

"Yes, how may I help you?" a deep, yet gentle and friendly, masculine voice said.

Startled, Fry tumbled off the couch onto a heap on the floor, flailing to hide behind something. He had heard that voice once before in his recent past, but couldn't quite place it-

"Computer?"

"Yes?" the baritone voice asked, showing no trace of impatience.

"Why are you talking like that? You're really freaking me out."

"I'm sorry about that. I had no idea."

The phrase triggered something in Fry's porous mind. He had heard that phrase before. Where? And then he remembered crouching in a closet, hearing those same words. That gentle, understanding, patient voice—

"Wait a second! Why are you talking like-"

* * *

"—Gary!?"

The PE captain stared at the face on the computer console, tuned to one of the few surviving surveillance holos around the entrance. The familiar face grinned up apologetically.

"Sorry to have to bug you so soon, but Nibbler somehow finally broke out of your apartment. I guessed he might try to come here."

Leela sighed outwardly, swore inwardly. "I'm not surprised. He's been trying to break out for two days now. Hang on." She turned to Amy. "Get to your car and start it up. We're leaving as soon as I handle this."

The trudge to the front hole was getting familiar. The force field protecting the entrance flicked away, and Gary stepped inside. Before the field powered up, something small and dark dashed into the room and clung to Leela's shins.

"Nibbler, honey!" Leela cried. "What's wrong?" Her pet looked awful, and not just because of the cute bandage wrapped around his head, left over from this afternoon's accident. The little creature was shaking with anxiety, fear, and excitement—actually she couldn't tell. He was babbling up a storm, though.

"What's he saying?" said Gary, a bit flummoxed now that Nibbler had appeared.

"I don't-", she was cut off as Nibbler scampered away toward the main hangar. She followed, motioning to Gary to follow. "Come on, help me get him."

The handsome young man grinned. "Aye, Aye …."

* * *

"-Captain."

"What?" Fry stammered.

"Captain Turanga Leela reprogrammed my speech circuit 23 days ago," the computer repeated pleasantly. "She also set my charisma timbre to 9.5, baritone level to 7.5, speech tempo to 75% thoughtful, and 25% concerned, and inflection level to 'cute'."

"Leela programmed the computer to talk like Gary?" Fry said.

"Yeah, she did," Bender said.

"Gosh, that's kinda—" Why was it so hard to say? "-lame. I mean, I can see Amy and Kif doing something like that, but _Leela_?"

Bender's yawn simulator booted up. "So?"

"I mean, she wasn't even dating Gary. They were only going to start last night."

"Big deal. So she's mooning over this handsome, talented guy who looks like he strolled right out of a fan fiction. We processed this information hours ago."

Still off balance, Fry looked around blankly and said, "Computer, what's at the center of the universe?"

"Please clarify the foundation of your question—do you mean the center in the physical sense, or the sociological sense?"

Fry and Bender looked at each other.

"What kind of stupid question is that?" Bender demanded.

"You can only have one center, can't you?" said Fry, prepared to learn that once again, he was being stupid.

"I will assume that you mean the most literal definition, the physical center of the universe."

"Yeah, sure," Fry muttered darkly, actively looking for reasons to hate the computer, and having no trouble finding them.

"The center of the universe is 50 billion light years away, in the M590182 supercluster of galaxies, beyond the observable universe."

"If we can't see it, how do we know it's there?"

Bender shook his head. "I sometimes forget how stupid the Stupid Ages are." Turning back to the red light on the computer consule, the robot asked, "How long to get there?"

"Approximately 100 billion years."

Fry glanced toward Bender, his brows furrowed.

"Is that a long time?"

Bender shrugged. "For a robot? Nah, not if you can generate your own Sudoko puzzles to pass the time. But you? Well, I'd be sweeping your dust off the floor billions of years before that."

Fry faced the single red light that was his best guess of the ship computer's "face". "That seems kinda long. Can't we fly there quicker?"

Gary's voice replied patiently: "Based on current fuel levels I can travel ten light-minutes at subspace speed. After that it would take about 100 billion years to have 85% certainty that the vessel would drift to the center of the universe, assuming a constant velocity upon burnout and no restroom stops."

"Why can't we just fly there straight?"

"As I said," the computer said gently, "we only have enough dark matter to fly for 20 minutes."

"Geez," muttered Bender, "I thought I'd never say this, but we shoulda took that little rat-

* * *

-Nibbler!"

Leela burst into the hangar, followed closely by Gary, both whipping their heads around, searching for Nibbler while Leela continued to call.

Amy, who had just finished packing her makeup kit and was starting to walk down the stairs to the Romeo, was startled, and rapped her hand accidentally on the railing. She squealed in frustration. "My nails! Can't you just _walk_ through a door for once-- Oh, hi Gary," she said, her tone and posture switching gears as effortlessly as the PE Ship would have done, had it had gears, or a transmission. She batted her eyes at the young man, who was tapping something into his wrist console, just as Leela was tapping into hers.

"Hey, Amy."

"I've hooked into the security holos, but I don't see Nibbler, " muttered the PE captain. "What is going on with him? He's been acting strange for days now."

"Yeah," agreed Amy. "Last night, I had a hard time dragging him to my place after I took him from you." She resumed trimming her nails with her pocket laser. "You know, maybe he smelled Fry hiding at your place. He's always kind of liked him, you know?"

She glanced up and wondered why Leela was frowning, waving her arms in front of her. Gary, who was standing in front of Leela, didn't notice this, because he had stopped and stared, puzzled, at Amy.

"Leela's pet smelled _who_ at Leela's place? Fry? Wasn't he--"

Too late, Amy realized what she'd said. Instinctively, she twisted her body into her most seductive pose, hoping to shut down Gary's brain the way she was able to shut down most brains with a Y chromosome. However, she forgot her laser was still on, so she nearly sliced off the tip of her cute nose, somewhat ruining the intended effect.

Gary didn't notice, because he was now looking at Leela.

"What's going on?"

Leela would have rather been in a gunfight than be in this situation, so she was deeply relieved when a voice spoke from behind her, even though she had no idea who was speaking.

"Captain Turanga Leela?"

Gratefully she glanced over her shoulder, taking in the young Neptunian and the rest of the white-uniformed crew clustered about him by the doorway to Farnsworth's lab. For some reason Leela felt queasy as she saw the last member of the group, a yarn alien, glide through the door.

"Yes?"

"Sorry to bug you, but we've been sent to give you and Amy Wong a quick psych health check—you know, check for mental and emotional problems from your recent hostage crisis?"

"It was hardly a scary situation. Frustrating really. And anyway, who let you in?"

"Oh, the police gave us building access," the Neptunian said vaguely, as a wheeled cabinet appeared behind him. Leela, Amy, and Gary started to turn to look at the odd device.

It was at that moment that Nibbler's gibbering punched through the oppressive silence of the large chamber. Leela snapped her attention back toward the console. Her little pet had somehow appeared in front of the main PE console, playfully punching a bunch of keys at random. Somehow, by accident, he had refreshed the display of users accessing the DOOP defense system. Leela blinked. Two new users were now scanning the outer planets, including Saturn's rings.

Leela strode toward Nibbler, who hopped into her arms, purring, as if nothing unusual had happened. Without a backward glance the PE Captain started descending the stairs toward Amy's car.

"Amy, we're outta here."

The yarn figure trilled a few notes, which were translated a moment later into "Wait!"

"Sorry," Leela said, striding across the hangar floor. "You can tell me how emotionally damaged I am when I get back." She flashed a quick smile at Gary. "And you can tell me other things."

"This hasn't happened before; we've always gotten her to at least look," muttered the young Neptunian.

A staccato burst of whistles were translated a moment later as, "Quick, go stop her and make her look."

The Neptunian looked incredulously at the yarn creature.

"Um, you want _me_ to try and _stop_ her?"

"They're all gone," a third team member helpfully pointed out.

It was true. Amy's ship was disappearing through the hole in the room, and the footfalls from Gary's stride were fading away down the exit corridor

* * *

"How're we gonna get more whale oil?" Fry said.

"Dark matter-" the computer corrected.

"Whatever. Where's the nearest gas station?"

"Fifteen minutes, past the Charon entranceway to interstellar route Sqrt(66), assuming legal flight speeds," Gary's voice said.

Fry turned to Bender. "Can we sneak there and fill up?"

"If by sneak you mean smashing through the electromagnetic barriers onto the starway, dodging all the bounty hunters and DOOP patrol ships, then somehow managing to slow down to actually get fuel—then yeah, maybe."

"Bounty hunters?" Fry said.

"Oh yeah, forgot. Someone's posted a $2 million Woolong reward for us." Bender's head turned momentarily, as Zoidberg entered the bridge. "Didn't say whether it had to be all of us, or just some of us--or whether there was a reward for just returning the hostages" he mused, eyes tracking Zoidberg's waddle towards Fry.

"What's a woolong?"

"Are we playing 20 questions here, or what? All you need to know is that $2 million is not enough to get me to turn myself in. Yet. I'm waiting to see if the reward goes higher."

"Bounty hunters!" Fry said, breathless. "How awesome is that!" His face dropped suddenly. "Oh wait. I guess it's not so awesome, since they're trying to kill us." He thought for a moment, then shrugged. As a delivery boy, various forms of life had been trying to kill him on a daily basis for years now. No biggie.

"Oh, they're not trying to kill us. Just capture us alive."

The young man relaxed even further.

"Oh. Neat. I wonder what one looks like?"

"I can help you, my friend," Zoidberg said. "Turn around."

The robot jumped into the air and spun around, followed a moment later by Fry, whose brain took a moment to decide whether to commit an anal hygiene violation, before taking a wait-and-see approach.

Fortunately there was little to see, as Zoidberg was only pointing toward the viewport, so Fry allowed his gaze to wander past the Decapodian's claw, back to the spectacular view. It was so easy to lose yourself in that sight—the chunks of ice, the creamy hue of Saturn off to the side, the bright stars moving in the background--

_Stars moving?_

Just as Fry's brain started to realize what that meant, he felt a shudder through the hull as the ship's engine roared to life.


	30. Part III, Chapter 3

"Do you really have to have that thing dangling from the rear view mirror?" Leela asked.

"All the "in" people have fuzzy pink Dodecahedrons," Amy grumbled. "Haven't you heard?" She winced, having caught herself too late. "Oops, sorry, I forgot you aren't up to date on those things." She couldn't resist the little barb, as she was still a little annoyed at Leela for not letting her drive. She batted the neon toy playfully, as the Moon filled up their viewport and then slid past.

"You, and it, are blocking my view," the Cyclops muttered, flicking her glance at the radar, then freezing her gaze on the screen. "Sit back," she said.

Something in Leela's tone caused Amy to snap back into her buggalo-lined seat, and look to her right. A vessel about twice the size of the PE ship was ascending from the Moon and slowly starting to parallel their course.

"They after us?" the intern asked.

"No, but they're heading to the same place," Leela said, ramming the Romeo's dainty control rod forward in a fruitless attempt to make their tiny ship move faster. "And they'll be way past us in moments."

Indeed, Amy could already see the glow from the exhaust nozzles of the ship as it pulled ahead.

"Too bad we can't just hitch a ride," she said. "Me and my friends used to be able to get halfway to Sirius with just a wink and a giggle. Course there were some real Creeps out there—"

"Yeah, Creepious VI has an overpopulation problem," Leela said, "but you've given me an idea. Don't you have a tractor beam somewhere here? You know, to tow you when you break down?"

Puzzled, Amy tapped a fuzzy pink switch on the dashboard, and then her eyes widened as comprehension dawned. "You're gonna-"

"Put your helmet on and seal your suit," Leela said.

Amy barely had time to finish sealing her space suit before Leela rerouted all power the Beta Romeo could muster from the engines to the tractor beam. Moments later, Amy's head slammed back against her Buggalo-lined seat, as the beam locked into the stern of the larger vessel, and the small craft groaned under the sudden acceleration. A crack appeared in the windshield and a faint hiss betrayed the presence of air leaking into vacuum.

"I'm glad I made us put on the suits," Leela said through gritted teeth, trying to move her arms against the acceleration. "We'll be lucky if this thing holds together before we get out of the solar system. I still don't know what I'm going to do about Nibbler if we break apart." She glanced worriedly at the small form napping and purring peacefully between them.

Any snarky reply Amy was going to respond with was cut short by the sudden barrel roll Leela executed to dodge a blast of directed energy sent to them from the larger vessel. Like a cow's tail trying to swat away an annoying fly, the rear turret of the bounty hunter's vessel peppered the surrounding space with energy blasts, but couldn't track the feints and dodges Leela managed to put the tiny ship through, while nursing the fragile tractor beam connection joining the two vessels. Within moments the firing stopped.

"Goosh," exhaled the intern. "Guess they gave up on us?"

"No," Leela said, not taking her eye off the long-range sensors, "they simply need the power to get where we all want to go as fast as possible." An image of Saturn appeared on the screen. "We'll deal with these guys in a moment. But we all have to get there first." And with that, she gingerly adjusted the tractor beam, drew their tiny vehicle in close to the bounty hunters' ship, activated the electromagnetic parking clamps, and fastened them to the ship's hull.

* * *

"Can't we go faster?" Fry whined, nervously casting glances out the viewport.

"We are currently flying at the legal speed limit toward the Charon on-ramp onto the Sqrt(66) starway," the computer said, giving no hint of impatience at having had to repeat itself five times in three minutes.

"Can't we go faster?"

"I can release the vessel to manual control, and then you can do whatever you wish. However, all your actions will be logged by me, as required by DOOP regulations."

Fry hesitated, torn between conflicting emotions. There was the blaze of joy at flying an honest to goodness spaceship, but also the faint gasps of common sense that reminded him that he had flown this incredibly complex craft only three times in seven years, and none of those experiences had turned out well.

More stars were moving outside the viewport, creating an illusion of snowflakes drifting by the ship.

"Bender, can you fly this thing?"

"Sure, that's easy, but I figure our reward is gonna get pumped up faster if we actually start shooting at things. So I'm gonna go to the gun turret and ratchet up our bounties by a billion or so." With that, Bender stood up from the couch and sauntered toward the bridge portal, chuckling quietly.

"Wait, Bender! Don't leave me alone here!"

"You'll be fine. Just point the ship away from all the other ships, and go really, really fast. And don't take my money." And with that the bending unit slipped away.

Fry turned toward Zoidberg and Scruffy, opened his mouth, had second thoughts, and turned back to the computer.

"OK, I'm flying the ship now."

"No problem," Gary's voice said cheerfully.

Fry grabbed the steering stick and pressed a large red button to open the engines further.

"Are you sure you want to do that?" the computer asked.

"Yes," Fry said firmly.

"Confirmed. The ship will self-destruct in –"

"CancelCancelCancelCancel.."

"Are you sure you want to stop the self-destruct sequence?"

"YesYesYesYesYesYes.."

"Please hit Cntrl-Alt-Delete on the side panel next to you."

Fry followed the advice, and then focused on trying to keep his hand from shaking.

"Umm…, where's the button to make the ship go faster?"

A green light appeared over a tiny dipswitch on the side of the console.

Fry flicked the switch like he had never flicked anything before. For a few moments the hull of the ship vibrated in response to the surge of the engines before the inertial dampers could compensate. Despite everything, Fry had to smile. For the first time in days, he now could really run for his life. Anywhere he wanted—

"Flight time decreased to fifteen minutes, based on increased fuel consumption," Gary's voice said.

* * *

______________________________________

"The Planet Express ship has been detected, and is headed to the Charon on-ramp," Kif said, unconsciously deflating his air sacs in preparation for a fight.

"Shoot them out of the sky," Zapp said authoritatively, savoring the sibilance of the phrase.

"Too far away, sir. Also, we would probably destroy the on-ramp to the starway."

"So?"

"That would not be a good thing, sir. The DOOP owns the starway."

"I see, Kif. I see."

Branignan adopted his favorite pose of command, then sat, frozen, trying to think of something to say. "What are those other dots on the screen?"

"Those are a bunch of bounty hunters trying to reach the on-ramp along with the PE ship."

"Why are they doing that?"

"They are trying to get on the starway with the PE ship before the on-ramp is shut down and the starway blockaded."

"Who's shutting down the on-ramp?"

"You're about the issue the order, sir."

"Of course. Kif, tell those civilian sissies who run this prissy starway to shut down the onramp. And have my men block traffic in the starway."

"Yessir," Kiff replied, typing in a code. "It's going to take a few minutes for the magnetic portals to generate enough power to seal the on-ramp gateway. There's a chance they might make it in."

"Fate has dealt me a low pair, Kif, but I'm going to jump her queen," the captain of the Nimbus growled grimly. "Get us to the gate!"

Kif nodded absently, too preoccupied to sigh, while scanning the transponder codes of the mess of vessels starting to converge on the portal. Early in their relationship, Amy and him had exchanged their codes, so they could map where each other was at all times, during their extended separations. He had never thought he would have to use it like this.

Somewhere, he knew, Amy was getting into trouble…

* * *

"The gateway to the ramp is starting to close," Amy said, teeth chattering from the heavy vibrations that were being transmitted to the Romeo from the shuddering engines of the bounty hunter's vessel.

"So I see," Leela said, staring at the long range scanner. On the display a blue donut-like torus was starting to contract around a force-field tube that lead onto the starway. The pitch of the vibration changed as the nearby turret of the bounty hunter ship rotated toward the bow of the vessel. "They're going to try to disable the ship before it reaches the on-ramp."

"What then? They'll be swarmed by bounty hunters trying to board."

"Well, we'll just have to be part of the swarm," fumed Leela. They had blown their advantage. Everyone now knew where the PE Ship was, since that damned delivery boy was blazing toward the entrance at top speed, and not exactly being subtle about it. And from all sides of the outer system ships were converging toward the closing portal, as if the portal were some sort of black hole sucking in all surrounding traffic.

"We still have one advantage," Leela mused. "A small one, but it might be important. The spacesuits on board have transponders on them that always activate when worn. If they try to abandon ship, we can lock in on those transponder codes and maybe sweep them up faster than everyone else."

"Shleet," Amy sighed, "my car is going to get dented, isn't it?"

"Yep," Leela said, consciously willing her muscles to relax.

* * *

"Ten minutes of flight time left," the computer said.

Fry tried to remember all their past crises on this same ship, and tried to recall what his competent captain had done. He could only remember two things. She always went faster, and always told him to calm down.

He slammed the control stick down, and the bridge shook noticeably as the PE engines screamed, as if in pain. As for calming down—well, snap, one out of two would have to do.

"Structural acceleration of frame is exceeding safety standards," warned the computer, a faint tone of disapproval edging into the voice for the first time. "And you only have eight minutes of fuel left, at current consumption rates."

"Am I still heading to the starway thingie?" Fry asked.

A calloused hand reached over Fry's shoulder and pointed to the display.

"Jes' as long as you keep that red x centered on the blue donut."

Startled, Fry glanced over his shoulder, almost burying his nose in Scruffy's mustache.

"How'd you know that?"

"Scruffy's been places, done things."

"Why is that donut getting smaller?"

"They're trying to close the gate 'fore you get there. But that's a lot of power they need to seal the entrance, so you got a minute or so."

And with that, the janitor leaned back on his sofa and opened up a new magazine, indifferent to the scene unfolding outside the viewport. Fry stared for a moment, then shrugged and turned back to the console, just as the first barrage of laser fire hit them.

* * *

The Romeo shook under the recoil of the directed energy weapons blazing from the bounty hunter's gun turret.

"Wow, everyone's throwing everything at them," Amy said, staring at her display, which was now ablaze with light.

"Everyone's getting desperate. My—I mean, the Professor's ship is really fast," Leela said, with a small hint of pride in her voice. "And their aim is terrible."

Off in the far distance, a laser blasted from the PE ship's turret, and one of the smaller vessels that looked like a mutated hedgehog suddenly began to spin, as one of its stabilizers was wrenched away by the laser impact.

"Nice shot," Leela said. "Wonder who's shooting? Not _him._"

Both women glanced at each other for a moment.

"Bender," they said, simultaneously.

The image of the cigar chomping robot gleefully unleashing death and destruction on organic life brought a fond smile to both of their faces, and the accumulated tension that had built up inside their cab dissipated ever so slightly.

Looking out the windshield, Amy could now clearly see the outlines of several ships as the trajectories of all the hunters began to parallel and merge, all with one destination—a little red x in the center of the rapidly shrinking magnetic portal.

"Is that one of Mom's ships?" she asked.

"I wouldn't be surprised," Leela said. "They probably want their money back before one of us bounty hunter scum strolls away with it."

Having turned her attention back to her display, Amy now squeaked in excitement.

"The PE ship is slowing!"

"Figures, since they're using so much power shooting," Leela mused. "They're gonna have to make a decision, fight or flee." It felt strange, very strange, to be talking about what the PE ship was doing, trying to guess what _her_ ship was up to.

_They didn't just steal a piece of machinery,_ she mused. _They've stolen a part of me, almost like kidnapping a child._

It was an unfortunate choice of image, because a stampede of other associations and memories of Fry's past sins flooded her thoughts, and the steering wheel groaned as her anger expressed itself in her grip. Even as she fumed, she marveled at her emotions. As a survival tactic, growing up in a hostile world, she'd always been able, on some level, to view her life with a sense of detachment, as if she was standing outside herself and dispassionately judging the situation. And now that part of her stood outside her jumble of emotions and was astonished at what she had become, and for a moment, just a moment, she felt like she was no longer in control of herself.

* * *

"Who shut off my guns!" raged the robot as he stormed onto the bridge. "I was just about to kill something or somebody!"

"Computer says we gotta shut off the guns to go faster," Fry grunted, eye glued to the display, where the blue donut was getting uncomfortably small.

"You're just jealous that I'm a better shot than you," muttered Bender, lighting one of his ubiquitous cigars.

"Just how many of those cigars you got?" Fry growled, coughing, while batting the control stick back and forth, hoping that the ship could dodge at least some of the lethal weaponry bouncing off their rapidly weakening shields.

Bender glanced at the display, and leaned back.

"Enough for the next six minutes."

"Excuse me, my friends," Zoidberg said, "but I don't think they want us anymore." His alien accent could not hide the clear disappointment in his trill. For the first time in his life, Zoidberg had felt truly wanted. Someone was actually paying money to find him. The normally earthbound doctor had been thrilled, even if all the people who wanted him had been shooting at him.

Bender cocked his head, an impressive feat for a bending unit without a neck. "Yeah, the shooting is dropping off."

"Why are they doing that? Is that good?" Fry asked.

Everyone on the bridge gave the classic "I dunno" shrug, and Fry ground his teeth in frustration. Everything was so complicated, and not for the first time he wished Leela were there to explain what it all meant.

* * *

"We're boned," Leela said.

Amy said nothing, hoping to stave off another lecture. No luck.

"Nobody's firing anymore, except the morons we're clinging too. Guess they're too stupid to realize that if they're going to make it through the portal, they're going to have to put all power into their engines."

Even as she spoke, the turret firing just a few meters above their head fell silent, and they felt a surge of acceleration as the bounty hunters' vessel struggled to close the distance between themselves and the tightening cloud of vessels pulling away ahead.

The hunters were becoming indistinguishable from the hunted, as every eye or equivalent sensory organ focused on their common enemy: the rapidly shrinking portal that within a minute would seal off the starway from the outside world. Everyone was now flying in parallel formation, postponing any attempt at capturing their prey, which darted forward tantalizingly close just ahead of all them, and instead squeezing every last bit of power from their engines, racing against the laws of physics, as the last 10% of the portal began to vanish. A giant game of space chicken was in progress—risk the barrier or pull away to safety? Given that a large DOOP contingent was probably waiting for the fugitives on the other side of the starway, there was only going to be one shot for a bounty.

Relieved, Leela saw that their vessel was all in, committed to success or destruction. She nodded her approval. The vessels were merging so close together, that she could see Larray, Walt and Ignar staring through the portal of the Mom Corp ship, now uncomfortably close. And then, suddenly, it peeled away and slowed down. Leela smirked, unsurprised; Mom's sons had a lot to lose, why should they risk everything?

_Why am I risking everything? Don't I have something to live for? My parents? Gary? Should I be risking Amy and Nibbler? _

She shoved the thoughts out of her mind. They had to get the ship; she had to get Fry.

Like poker players going all in, eleven ships barreled after the PE ship as the rest of the hunters swerved away to safety and surrender.

* * *

"Five seconds to closure," Kif said, watching the cluster of lights on his monitor streak toward the collapsing gate, his attention riveted on one of the larger dots, his hand clenching in frustration. There was no time to stop the process now. And here was the final seal intensifying in place—

* * *

Twelve vessels smashed onto the onramp, sending a burst of radiation propagating down the starway. The transition through the high energy densities of the port chopped the velocities of everyone almost instantaneously, and two ships at the tail of the group lost control and began spinning helplessly down Route Sqrt(66), bouncing off the force field barriers that encased the starway. Meanwhile, the outside world was getting crowded with frustrated bounty hunters, rubberneckers, and now the Nimbus. A few hunters shot laser fire at the PE ship in frustration, but their beams reflected harmlessly off the cylindrical force fields that safely ensconced the one-way traffic hurtling down the lanes. A short distance away, a second series of force fields encased the traffic flow heading in the opposite direction.

Despite the sudden deceleration, the runaways and the bounty hunters were still moving so fast that the normal traffic traveling along the starway seemed to be standing still, which turned out to be a bit of a problem as three other bounty vessels rear-ended into some normal traffic, planting the seeds for an enormous pile up.

Leela clenched her hands as their hitchhiked ship struggled to dart through the mess swelling around them.

"These guys are just too big," she muttered, "and what idiot allowed traffic to keep moving on this thing?"

* * *

"Why didn't you stop the traffic?" asked Kif.

"I refuse to inconvenience civilians because of the activities of desperate criminals," Zapp sniffed. "Now, shoot them."

"They got through onto the starway, along with some bounty hunters," Kif said, speaking slowly and clearly. "They're surrounded by regular traffic that hasn't reached our blockade yet. In order to take out the force fields, we're going to have to use the highest settings on our neutrino neutralizers. At that power level, we can't control our aim well. We're going to hit a lot of civilians. And the blockade is going to stop them anyway."

"Sometimes, Kiff, you have to break a few eggs to make a margarita," Zapp declared, "and some day you'll understand that. Also, they're not civilians, they're collateral damage. And if someone gets shot, at least they'll die knowing they weren't inconvenienced."

Kif decided that now was as good a time as any to sigh.

* * *

It was just like a video game, thought Fry, a video game with no extra lives. He played best with only one life left. Hands clenched white on the control stick, he caught glimpses of small passenger vans, cargo vessels, and hypertrucks as he glanced the PE ship against them, attempting to thread his way through the sluggish traffic crowding the lanes, frantically trying to stay ahead of the cloud of debris and wreckage that was snowballing behind him. He could only see three kilometers ahead on his radar and three seconds into the future. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the radar display a huge mass of stationary traffic accumulating just ahead of them, but just behind him seven ships were wending their way through the unfolding disaster, and clearly starting to converge on him. But he couldn't go any faster.

He felt a shudder pass through the ship as a laser cannon impacted him on the side. Glancing sideways, he saw a news van swerve deliberately sideways into him. Just before the collision, he saw the driver.

"Morbo?" he said.

* * *

"_The puny Earth human is now on the starway, but he will be destroyed, a pitiful preview of what lies in store for all humans-"_

"_Thank you Morbo," _ Linda's voice interrupted. _"For those of you just joining us, criminal masterentities Philip Fry and Bender Rodriguez have just forced their way onto the sqrt(66) expressway-"_

Amy lowered the volume of the news broadcast, just as a vehicle flashed by their viewport, missing them by less than 100 meters.

"Hey, that's the Robot Mafia-" she began, but was cut off as the Romeo gave a sudden lurch, and she realized Leela had released the clamps from their free ride.

"Wha-"

But Leela had already reset the tractor beam on the rapidly vanishing end of the Donbot's car, and Amy's head slammed back into her helmet as her poor car squeaked and snapped under the enormous jolt that pulled them forward. Looking in her rear-view screen, Leela saw their original host suddenly careen wildly into the sides of the starway in a fruitless attempt to prevent from ramming into a cloud of debris and bumper stickers. She allowed herself a tight grin—her split second decision had been correct. Strangely enough, in the midst of all this destruction she was starting to relax. Like a narrow flashlight beam, her mind was shedding all distractions and was focusing on only one thing, the faint green blob of the PE ship bounding along the highway up ahead, four other vehicles in hot pursuit. _You know, whoever's flying that thing isn't doing too badly_, she thought. Even as she watched the PE ship, its outline grew larger. The Robot Mafia was fast. Fast and stupid. Good combination for right now.

* * *

"_However, the action may be short-lived. The DOOP has now shut down the starway and blockaded all traffic downstream of the Charon entrance-"_

Linda's words were drowned out as the bridge shuddered again under the collision with Morbo's newsvan.

"Can I shoot him?" Bender growled.

Fry, sweating, didn't bother to respond.

"Five minutes of fuel left," Gary's voice chimed in. "And one minute to the stopped traffic up ahead."

What was he going to do? What was he going to do? He wished he had his Rush mix tape—it would have calmed his panic a wee bit.

Up ahead he could now see a swarm of red lights, a mix of brake lights from a sea of stopped traffic, and beyond, the flashing lights of a small DOOP fleet.

The roadblock.

* * *

Fire," said Zapp.

"Just a few more moments and we'll have them at the -" Kif cautioned.

Zapp swaggered his finger and pressed a button.

The weaponry of the Nimbus blazed into action, and the neutrino neutralizers pounded into the force fields surrounding the starway. Had it not been for those fields, the PE ship might have been vaporized instantly. As it happened, the force fields took the brunt of it, and the surge regulators embedded around the starway overloaded and blew their safeties, heaving the entire starway vertically several meters. The force fields surrounding all lanes of the starway flickered, then vanished. For a few seconds, at least, the starlanes were now exposed to the rest of the Universe.

* * *

Now that the roadblock was visible, Bender's calm was starting to dissipate, and his hands restlessly picked Fry's pocket, extracting the new wallet that the bald man had given him yesterday.

"OK, meatbag. What's next?"

_Good question, _panicked the delivery boy. _Don't panic, don't panic…_

_What would Leela do?_ He asked himself again. It was not a question he usually asked, because whenever he had been in a situation where he would have wanted to ask that question, Leela had always been right next to him, so instead of trying to think, he had happily settled for watching. Well, time to start.

_What would Leela--_

At that moment the entire starway, including all lanes of traffic, seemed to shudder, then suddenly jerked toward the left. Startled, Fry yanked the controls to the left, plunging the ship into a barrel roll.

"Force field's down," Bender said casually, and it was true. Fry could now clearly see a phalanx of bounty hunters clustered around all sides of the starway, frozen motionless, as if they were in shock. Then they began to move.

Traffic wreck behind him, blockade ahead, bounty hunters above, a glimpse of the Nimbus below, Morbo to the right—at least he thought it was the right—the ship was still rolling, rolling to the left—

Toward the starway lanes carrying traffic in the opposite direction.

Fry started to flick his wrist to the right, to stop the ship from stumbling onto the other half of the starway, but for some reason his arm hesitated for a moment. He blinked in confusion, wondering what idea was germinating in his mind, and in that moment, Bender, being uncharacteristically gentle, leaned over and tapped the controls to the left again. Thus the ship continued to roll and casually slipped onto the lanes carrying traffic in the other direction, like an oblivious dog trotting across a freeway.

Five hundred life forms screamed and five hundred anti-collision safety systems swerved five hundred vehicles sideways, below, and over the PE Ship, which was now hurtling straight down the starway against incoming traffic. Realizing what they had just done, Fry froze in place, with a death-grip on the controls, staring straight ahead as vehicles flashed past him on all sides, scared to flinch his muscles in any direction, terrified to even breathe.

* * *

Somewhere in the back of her mind Leela could hear Amy screaming. Another part of her impartially observed two bounty hunters swerve off the starway to avoid the blockade just ahead, abandoning the chase. Two other vehicles attempted to jump across the lanes into the oncoming traffic after Fry, one clipping an oncoming vehicle and bursting in to a pretty pattern of radiation. Behind them three other vehicles were trying the same stunt. She noted the freeway force barrier attempt to switch on for a fraction of a second, then flicker off again.

_The robot hunters. Only the robots can make such a move with split-second timing._

The DonBot's car, a few hundred meters ahead of them, was starting to roll into the opposite lanes in pursuit, confident in the microsecond-scale reflexes of positronic brains. Their ship was being dragged along, offset a few meters to the side.

The rest of the bounty hunter ships, those who were not robots, were stumbling off the starway, focusing on avoiding the ball of debris that, now unconstrained by the encasing cylindrical force fields, expanded freely into space. Other ships started to swarm just outside the traffic flow of the opposite lanes, trying to find an opportunity to take a pot shot at the PE ship, safely ensconced by a surrounding tunnel of traffic moving in the opposite direction. And in the distance, the Nimbus lumbered into view, passing under the now ineffective blockade.

She wanted to maneuver with the Robot Mafia, turn with them into the traffic. But she was afraid. No matter how good she was, she didn't have the reflexes of a machine. It was suicide to try to drive head on into traffic moving at these speeds.

_But he was doing it, wasn't he?_

How could she risk Amy and Nibbler's life on what amounted to a throw of the dice?

_He's doing it. He's getting away. He's showing you up. He's making a fool out of you. Him. Braver than you. How will you live with yourself?_

Dimly she became aware that Amy was not the only one screaming. That other high-pitched voice had to be her. But instead of fear, it was fury that was bursting forth, and without further thinking she mirrored the motions of the DonBot's limousine, keeping the tractor beam safely intact, and tossed their lives into the lap of Chance.


	31. Part III, Chapter 4

**...and thus I stick my toe into the water again with a short update. Sorry for the loooong hiatus.**

**Many thanks to Archonix for the cover art...**

* * *

"Kif, why are the shiny blue things back up on the screen?"

"The force fields have come back online, sir."

"Shoot them again."

The Lieutenant released a particularly aggravated sigh, before speaking evenly through clenched lips.

"Um, sir. For one thing, we have to get in a position where we can get a clean shot. For another thing, we can just ask to have the fields shut off again."

The Nimbus skimmed alongside the star way, like a shark cruising past a school of minnows, trying to get the one fish that was swimming the wrong way. That green fish, unfortunately, was well-hidden by the surrounding school flashing past it.

Kif wasn't sure, but he thought Amy's transponder signal was broadcasting from inside those lanes as well. He had to do something to delay Zapp…

"Sir, should I issue your order to lower the fields again sir?" Another idea then hit Kif. "And should we set up another of your blockades on those lanes, upstream of this traffic?"

Zapp paused, frowning. It always amazed him how fast he could think. Why, he thought so fast he couldn't even remember thinking of these ideas. Oh well. It gave him a chance to say one of his favorite lines. He leaned forward and dramatically pointed his finger at the screen.

"Make it so!"

* * *

Amy didn't dare breathe, as though exhaling might cause the sides of the ship to bulge out and thus clip the swarm of traffic darting past them on all sides. It was like they were careening down a tunnel, a tunnel comprised of blurry vehicles heading in the opposite direction. A few feet in either direction, and no amount of cuteness was going to help her.

She glanced left. Other than being several shades paler then she had been moments earlier, Leela looked the same, eye locked firmly ahead, hands clenched on the wheel. Nibbler looked fast asleep, at first, but then Amy noticed his third eye was only half closed.

Leela's face, and the entire cabin, suddenly turned a light shade of pink. Amy swiveled her head to look out the viewport to her right. A sea of red lights and sirens streaked past, just beyond the traffic encasing them, as they passed the blockade set up in the other lanes. Looking ahead, she could see the DonBot a few hundred meters ahead. And barely a hundred meters beyond that-

"I'm tightening up the tractor beam, reeling us in closer," Leela said. "I've gotta be real careful not to burn out or break the beam. We're running out of time."

"How much time?" asked Amy.

"Only three minutes of fuel left," the computer said calmly. "Performance will start to degrade momentarily."

Bender looked almost as calm as the computer's voice, leaning back in the co-pilot's chair and watching the DOOP blockage vanish behind them. Behind him, Scruffy sat reading his magazine, and Zoidberg cheerfully stared out the window at the pretty lights flashing by.

Fortunately, Fry was panicked enough for everybody, mouth hanging dumbly open, shoulders unconsciously hunched together.

The ship shuddered.

"Nozzle flared out for a moment."

"I see it," Leela said, "they're almost running on empty now."

The flicker in one of the PE ship's nozzles was gone, but the Donbot's limo had suddenly closed the gap with the PE ship to a few meters. Recklessly the limo tried to pull alongside, squeezing between the PE ship and the oncoming traffic. Amy's Romero was so close that the two women could see a grappling hook shoot out from the limo and embed into the airlock door.

* * *

A dull thud rang across the bridge.

"Now what?" whimpered the delivery boy. "What's next?"

Bender stretched his limbs, and leaned back in his chair, next to Fry, who was huddled over the ship's controls. He pulled his Zuban out of his mouth, and said "Simple, meatbag. Looks like my buddies from the Robot Mafia are goin' ta pay us a visit."

"Um..isn't that bad?"

"Nah-it's not like they're gonna shoot us on sight or anything, right? They just wanna capture us, which gives us a chance to bribe them." He gestured toward the overstuffed couch. "I got $2.5 million Woolongs in there alone, and another half of Mom's $2.7 billion bucks stashed away in some strange places on this ship. We robots, being superior to you meatbags, know the value of cold, hard, cash. All we hafta do is wait for them to show up-"

He started to make a vague gesture toward the bridge portal, but then glanced at the radar display, and casually leaned sideways.

"Jes' a sec, Fry."

He poked at Fry's control stick, glancing Fry's hands a millimeter to the left, which in turn shifted the PE ship laterally by about five feet. Less than a second later, a farm ship loaded with Hyperchickens flashed past them, missing them by two feet. Unfortunately for the chickens, the Donbot's limo hadn't yet moved.

* * *

Amy just barely had time to see a cloud of feathers streaking toward them before Leela slammed the controls, throwing Amy against the side of the ship. At these speeds even feathers became deadly projectiles, and here were hundreds of them dashing by her window. The hiss of air escaping from her overstressed Romeo became a steady moan.

"Wow! Their grappling hook held!" Leela cried. At the moment Amy didn't care, because the wind was knocked out of her, but Leela watched with some admiration as the Donbot's limo stabilized, despite now missing a tail fin, displaying a broken window, and being covered with white splatters. The hyperchicken truck had given the limo only a glancing blow, but to her it was still a miracle the limo had survived in one piece. As she stared, the limo hauled itself against the PE ship's airlock, and one of the limo's windows began to roll down. Feeling a surge of desperation, Leela risked contracting the tractor beam further, and the PE ship seemed to leap toward them, filling their viewscreen.

"Seal your helmet, Am- Faye. We're gonna get on that-"

Just then the tagger on the tip of her laser pistol turned from green to red, and a tinny voice began to speak.

* * *

"Fifty-nine seconds-" the computer began, before the newscast burst over the PE Ship's monitor.

"_This is Linda, with breaking news. Our own Morbo has an exclusive update on the exciting hunt for the two bank criminals currently taking place on Sqrt 66. The Bounty Hunter's Guild has just announced that a new agency has posted a new reward for this desperate duo- three million Woolongs!"_

"I knew it," chuckled Bender. "I just knew if we blew enough stuff up we'd end up being worth more. Still ain't enough to match our bribe though."

_-and this new reward is only valid if they are proven dead, bonus if killed on sight or first direct sensory acquisition."_


End file.
